Easter Greetings from Conference Minister

Originally published in the Coconut Wireless, April 13, 2022.

Easter Greetings

The Easter acclamation, "Alleluia, Christ is risen!" may well be followed by the response, "and so have we." We are emerging from the heaviest restrictions of the COVID pandemic and beginning to shape life in both connection and reaction to the pandemic. I suspect this is much like the disciples who had to shape new lives both in connection and in reaction to the resurrected Christ.

As we emerge this Easter from our pandemic tombs, we find life is different, but people are the same. Already gun violence has returned to the streets of our country. Already nations are invading other nations. Already we are expected to return to work and catch up our output that slacked under COVID restrictions. Already people are scrambling for ego aggrandizement. Already others are paying the price.

I encourage us all to pay attention to the mystery of our faith: "very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds" (John 12:24 NIV). And I challenge all of us to rest in the assurance that God's miracle of resurrection is already among us. We may not notice it for what we see seems lifeless and devoid of beauty, yet God's marvelous gift of life is here. As the hymn of promise states, "in the bulb there is a flower."

David K. Popham, Conference Minister