April 2026

Dear Friends

I find April a profoundly hopeful time of year. Spring is at full throttle in the natural world all around us and the great shout of Easter praise looms close now. We will gaze again, uncomprehendingly at first, like the first disciples, into the empty tomb and contemplate again, as for the first time, the wounded hands and pierced side of the Risen Jesus. As understanding gradually dawns in our hearts and minds, so astonished faith and great joy, replacing our deep despair bursts out, bringing the light of hope into our whole being, even in the midst of a dark and troubled world.

There is a phrase which has struck me this Lent from the Anglican Office of morning prayer: “In the darkness of our sin your light breaks forth like the dawn.” This is, for me, both realistic and hopeful. Darkness is a reality in our world; not only with open warfare between powerful nations with, at the time of writing, no certain good end point in sight, but also our unrelenting war on the natural world, which simply goes grinding on, day by day, seemingly unobserved, but with many frightening end points clearly in sight. But do we care, or do we care enough? The trouble with the deceit and corruption of evil is, as one former Soviet dissident famously put it: “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956. So where is true hope to be found when I myself am part of the problem of fallen humanity?

The light that breaks forth in our darkness is of course the truth found in Jesus Christ: His death on the cross which deals with evil and sin once for all and his glorious resurrection from the dead, the herald and foretaste of the coming new heaven and new earth - God’s promised restoration of all things in the fullness of time.

I love Tolkien’s masterful epic tale The Lord of the Rings which puts into a narrative story form some of these great underlying truths of the Christian faith. My favourite quote from all three films is brilliantly delivered by Ian McKellan as Gandalf. The peoples of middle earth are hemmed in and besieged by the great Orc army of Saron in Helms Deep. The future looks hopeless and destruction imminent. Gandalf tells the fellowship that he is going away to get help and departs - worryingly for them - now they are all alone. But his last words before he disappears are both strange but offer a slither of hope “Look to the east on the third.” And so it was that he appears, on the third day, and so deliverance comes with help from beyond.

Neither are we alone because: “In the darkness of our sin your light, O God, in the person of your Son our Saviour, breaks forth like the dawn.”

Happy Easter everyone.

Revd, Steve Paynter
Stevedpaynter@gmail.com
01793 296870

Prayer: Collect for Easter Day.
Lord of all life and power, who through the mighty resurrection of your Son
overcame the old order of sin and death to make all things new in him:
grant that we, being dead to sin and alive to you in Jesus Christ, may reign with him in glory; to whom with you and the Holy Spirit be praise and honour, glory and might, now and in all eternity.