Thought for the week: from our Minister, Rev’d Vicci Davidson
Brothers and Sisters Christ is alive!
Let Christians sing
His cross stands empty to the sky
Let streets and homes with praises ring
His love in death shall never die.
The great Easter hymn was written by URC Minister Brian Wren for his congregation in Essex. On April 4th 1968, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr had been assassinated in Memphis. Faced on the one hand with the devastating news of this violent death of the leader of the nonviolent movement for Civil Rights and on the other the responsibility to preach the Good News of the resurrection only ten days later, Wren wrote this hymn. He noted afterwards: “I tried to express an Easter hope out of that terrible event, in words which could be more widely applied, and wrote ‘Christ is alive!’ because our available hymns spoke of Easter as a glorious event long ago, far away, and high above.”
Charles Wesley too, in his time, wrote of the resurrection of Jesus in the present tense: “Christ the Lord is risen today.” As we celebrate with all who have gone before, and all who are still to come, we remember that this truth is for us, for our children, and our children’s children and that our challenge and our joy is to live the truth of Easter – the pain and the glory – in every day of our lives, to do our little bit to ensure that the joy, justice, love and praise of our Lord is spread throughout the world.
Christ is alive! His Spirit burns
Through this and every future age
Till all Creation lives and learns
His joy, his justice, love and praise.
Happy Easter!
God bless,
Vicci