“Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life…” Daniel 12:2

My marking of time has a new memory. We’re used to marking time. We do this with birthdays, anniversaries, facebook memory settings and so much more.

This time last year I came down with an illness that hit me so powerfully that I labelled it ‘the beast’. It briefly gave me insights into my own mortality and just how precious, fleeting and fragile the beauty of a God given life is.

I can pinpoint the moment I knew the darkness meant all was not well but here I am, one year on and able to look back. I am waiting, like all of us, for the ending. It may be a long awaited ending of mixed emotions of restlessness; waiting in hope and longing; but also waiting in loss and pain. Some of us will be waiting with memories of loss of family, friends, loved ones, time or energy. For some the end will be gradual and there will be ongoing smaller endings of learning to cope in new ways or steps into recovery. Some will already be in endings of changed lives or livelihoods and uncertain futures.

In my waiting I have watched far more tv than ever before. One film was ‘The Never Ending Story’ (1984, remade in the 1990s). It’s the story of a dark force called The Nothing which seeks to engulf the World. Something in the theme resonated for me and this is why we’ve taken ‘Long Awaited Ending’ as our church theme for Easter.

We’re waiting for the end to restrictions, distance relationships and lack of community and the end of this phase of the amazing vaccine effort but as a Christian I know that there is another ending. It is the ending longed for in Scripture across generations and it is the defeat of the darkness of evil. The ending which arrives at Easter is the resurrection of Jesus and by placing my trust in Him I know that my mortality is only fleeting because eternity beckons.

This Easter, please join us on Palm Sunday by collecting a Palm Cross from the box in the church porch in the days beforehand. You don’t need to be particularly religious to take one.

I’m inviting you to put your palm cross in a window or on a gate post in our lovely neighbourhood as a sign of the end coming and hope returning. It’s an invitation to help all who see it be assured that the end has come and is coming.

There is hope for tomorrow and in it I invite you to remember that yours is a precious God given life. Easter means the waiting is over and we have a new life to live which takes us to the end of time (Daniel 12:4).