It’s supposed to be 60 degrees tomorrow. That should do a lot toward melting the rest of the snow outside. Very small green shoots are coming up outside the Parish House-- maybe crocuses. With the winter passing away the spring is coming to life. A fitting progression for this Easter season.

For the most part, this has been an amazingly healthy and predominantly young congregation. We have focused on many different gospel themes, but the message and comfort of Easter joy following that comes after the sorrow of Good Friday has not been a dominant one. Over the past sixteen years here at St. Peter I had led very few funeral services for members and their close relatives. In the last month I have led two such funerals and I am aware that there have been other deaths to family and friends, as well as serious illnesses and other life disrupting events.

Our Christian tradition is rich with various emphases and different themes that come together and give us a picture of a God who loves us and cares for us. Our God is a God who blesses us in this life and who promises to be there with us and for us in the next life as well. St. Paul goes so far as to say that he is sometimes torn between wanting to stay in this world as a servant of Christ and longing to know the fulfillment of that life to come.

Easter hope is what keeps us going as we travel through the sometimes difficult times of this life, certain that in the end and at the end God will win out and we will be part of God’s victory. With that certain end in view, the path from here to there seems less frightening and less threatening.

Whether you are experiencing or grieving the loss of someone or facing some other difficulty in your life, the Easter promise has been made by God and made real in the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ lives on and so we shall live on. Christ has conquered death and so we and those who have gone on before us need not fear death.

Our hope and our faith are in the God who sustained Jesus in his hours of need and who eventually raised him from the dead. We entrust ourselves and all we love into God’s strong, loving arms.

Pastor Peter Klotz