The Rt Rev Dr David James Bishop of Bradford writes
I don't come from a church-going family - I'm the white sheep so to speak. My mother must have been very surprised therefore when I at the age of five, said to her: "When I grow up I'm going to give you a really lovely present. I'm going to give you a lovely funeral!"
And 52 years later I did so. For the final going out piece of music at the end of her funeral service I asked the organist to play "I'm forever blowing bubbles". I think he was as surprised as my mother had been all those years before.
One day my mother challenged me about my Christian belief in life after death. "No-one's ever come back," she said. "Jesus did", I replied. "He doesn't count". "He does," I exclaimed. "He counts for everything". St Paul says that if Jesus didn't rise from the dead then our faith is futile and we may as well "eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die". But Jesus did rise from the dead. Therefore EVERYTHING changes - life and how we live it, death and what happens after, all take on new meaning and purpose and hope. A world which was dull and grey shines with all the colours of the rainbow When someone dies whom we love very much it can be a devastating blow, even if that person is well past the proverbial three score years and ten.
We feel part of our own self has died with them. But we also feel that something of them continues to live in us - we carry on conversations with them, as if left shoe and right shoe are continuing to walk side by side.
We wish our love could have kept them safe, kept them here, like a parent's love for their child. Death, however, is stronger than our love.
Not so with God's love for us. As Jesus said, God is the God of the living, not of the dead (he was referring to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, three ancestors of the Jewish people, who had lived centuries before). His love for us is stronger than death.
This is the Easter message of Jesus the Messiah written in his own death and resurrection. The Cross is God's kiss of life.
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