Mothers’ Union Lent Devotion for the Sixth Week in Lent, Wednesday 6th April 2022

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, Ephesians 2. 4-6.

Over the next week and a half, we will again be following the journey of Jesus from triumphant entry into Jerusalem to the dead broken body placed in a tomb. The disciples who had so much hope for this Messiah, scattered or in hiding as their world has come to an end. The springtime they had witnessed over the past three years or so ending abruptly in the decay of a lifeless body. They had hoped for so much when they had seen the sick healed, the dead bought back to life, the captive freed. And even though they were still alive, their inner souls were experiencing the same sense of disintegration and atrophy that comes with the death of a loved one.

The death of Jesus, however, was, as we know not the end. For three days he lay in the dark and decay of the tomb but then he was resurrected and transformed into a new and glorious body. Just as it was for the disciples, when they saw and believed in the resurrected Jesus. They were renewed and transformed into people who were prepared to go to the ends of the earth, often to the untimely violent end of their lives, in order to proclaim the Good News which Jesus’ death and resurrection means for all of us.

So, we too who have spent the last few years in a state of atrophy, diminished by all that we have had to live without, by the events we have lived through, by the people we have been separated from. We too can transform, heal and bloom again as life comes back into our lives this Eastertide and what amazing blooms we can all become. The transformation of all the decay and debris of life into the glorious flowering of your full potential as seen by God before you were born. Spectacular, flowering individuals who are called, just as the restored, renewed disciples were to proclaim the good news of Jesus wherever and whenever we are given the opportunity. Putting aside all our well-practiced excuses because the time for Transformation is Now.

With all my love and prayers for the coming Holy Week

Revd Sandra