Words from Bede Circuit

Dear Friends
Hope you are keeping well

`I called on your name, O Lord, from the depths of the pit: you heard my plea.` Lamentations 3 v55-56

Viktor Frankl spent three years in Auschwitz. He survived though his wife and family perished. He tells of one day shortly after the liberation of the camp he went for a walk through the country towards the market town a few miles from the camp.

The meadows were full of flowers. Larks rose singing into the sky. There was no one to be seen for miles around. There was nothing but the wide earth and sky, the singing of the larks, and the freedom of space. Then he fell on his knees to give thanks to God for his liberation. As he prayed one sentence came to mind that expressed what he was feeling, ‘I called on your name, O Lord, from the depths of the pit: you heard my plea.’ How long he knelt there repeating that sentence he could not tell. But he said later ‘On that day and in that hour my new life started. Step by step I progressed, until I again became a human being.’

We cannot separate the joy FrankL felt that day in that flower – filled meadow from the suffering he experienced in the camp. In fact, that joy would have no meaning were it not for the suffering that preceded it. In the same way we cannot separate the resurrection of Jesus from his passion and death. His glory cannot be separated from his pain. So, it must be for us, we can’t have Easter Sunday without Good Friday. But when we are experiencing Good Friday we should remember Easter Sunday.

Happy Easter

With good wishes and prayers
Revd Huw Sperring on behalf of the Bede Circuit Staff

NB; No Circuit Letter next week.