Resurrection life around us

I travel regularly along Maiden Gully Road, the initial path of the fire on Black Saturday. Not long after that a few new leaves sprouted on some trees. Some came straight out of the black trunks. But there looked to be little hope for many of the trees. Months passed before surprisingly, some started shooting from the base. Many that were surely dead sprang back to life. Some never made it, though. The damage had been too great. But in their place new trees are now growing. New life has come through-out the area in different ways. Sometimes species which had been crowded out, have a new chance of life after such an event.

Linda had a keen interest in nature and she also loved cross stitch. Even so, she was taken aback when Edna said, “I want to commission you to do a cross stitch picture for the new vestry when the church is redeveloped. The subject is to be “Resurrection Life”. It needs to have the cross with a dove flying above it but I’ll leave the actual design to you.”

Linda was overwhelmed. She had never worked out her own pattern and felt panic rising in her. She franticly searched through the many books of patterns she had to no avail. But, surprisingly, as the days passed thoughts came. She would do the cross as if it had taken root and started growing, a bit like trees did after fire. She found a heavily lopped tree in the Anglican churchyard and an espaliered one elsewhere that she could use to model the cross on. She found a dove in a book of embroidery for weddings. And she set these against a hill covered in wildflowers.

Edna and all who saw it were delighted with the results. Linda said that the funny thing was that in some way, it brought new life to her. It enabled her to be creative in a way she had never dreamt she could be. Edna had glimpsed the possibility of life for Linda and had dared to give her the opportunity for that life to spring up.

Today we are celebrating resurrection life. It is more than just repeating stories about what happened two thousand years ago. If that is all we can say and is all we are interested in, then the resurrection does not mean much. Its meaning is in the new life which has come in so many countless  ways through the centuries since and the relationships with Christ that have flourished in it.

The truth is, we can’t explain the resurrection and never will be able to know exactly what happened. To worry about how it happened for Jesus is to miss the point. The actual death had changed Jesus. He was not the same as before. His friends failed to recognise him. What matters now, as it did then, is for us to know that Christ is alive and active in our lives now and that we see the possibility of resurrection in life around us and encourage it in every possible way.

Julianne Parker