It is a strange time to be writing this column. I am composing it in what Christians call Holy Week – when we firstly remember Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem with all the crowds cheering him, then move through a time of increasing tension as the religious authorities plotted against him, through to his arrest, his abandonment by his friends, his trial, his torture and finally his death on Good Friday.

You are reading it in Easter week, when we celebrate the fact that after all this so many of his friends met him again, alive. If you think this is all made-up nonsense just consider this: in those days, women were not allowed to give evidence in a court of law as their evidence was considered worthless. Yet all four gospel accounts of have women as the first witnesses to the fact that they saw Jesus alive after his execution. If you had been going to invent such a story you would have had solid, respectable men as the witnesses.

I am writing this on the day when as a nation most of us are in lockdown, my husband and I are self-isolating; the virus seems to be getting more of a grip on certain parts of the country, though we seem to be more fortunate here, and we do not know how things are going to develop.

Our churches are locked at a time when most Christians would have been planning to come together to celebrate on Easter Sunday. There is sadness, fear, grief, and yet so much beauty in nature surrounding us, so much love and support from people around us, and perhaps in it all, seeds of hope. You are reading it on a day when...Who knows where we shall be at the time you are reading it?

Through it all we have one underlying certainty: God created us all, God loves us all, we are not destined for death, destruction and annihilation, but for life with God now and for ever. That is the deep underlying certainty that we have – the resurrection of Jesus Christ gives us that. We might add that, in addition, humanity itself is not being wiped out – coronavirus is unlike the threat posed by the probability of nuclear war and subsequent radiation that many of us were brought up with.

May God bless you all, keep you safe, give you joy and love, this Easter week and always.

Rev. Dr Maria Hearl

Associate priest in the Wellington and District Team Ministry.