ON KEEPING EASTER

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20527, 10 April 1941, Page 3

ON KEEPING EASTER

STORY OF THE CROSS MEANING OF GOOD FRIDAY POWER OF RESURRECTION On Keeping Easter "Every other person I hat I have met this week has been talking about holidays. One is going here for Easter. Another is going there. Well that is all to the good. It is good to get away for a few days from these crowded cities, it you can. It is good to leave the office and the telephone behind, and to rest yourself in body and mind in some quitcr spot where Nature can give you air to breathe, loveliness to to look upon, and peace to refresh you in your inmost, soul. "But if is not good to forget—as I am afraid that so many wilt —what Easier means. Easter Day is more than a holiday. It is a holy day. So is Good Friday. The two must be remembered together if we would understand the mind o-f God.

"I would beg all of you not to let Good Friday go by without serious thought. Go to a church, if you can. If not, do your thinking by yourself on a green bill, perhaps, that will remind you of another green hill far away, or walking under trees, so very beautiful just now, that make you remember those other trees to which the Master came that lie might face the worst: that the world could do and •'ace it in deep communion with the Father, or roaming down a country lane, as Christ so often walked and talked in country lanes with those wlm listened eagerly to His voice, which indeed if you are attuned to it. may have something this week to say to you. But. wherever vou inav be, in !hin!.

Crucifixion of Christ | "1 think of the story of the Cross. ! We believe, don't we. that: on the first | Good Friday God in Christ was nailed |to one of his own trees? If you bc- | lieve that, then for you, as for all ol | us. the Cross represents the most j amazing thing that ever happened in our human, history. Nothing can com- ! pare with it. and its consequences e-day are as great as they have ever been. They touch you and they touch me. For what were the forces that set themselves against Christ and brought Him to that agony? Pride was one. Prejudice was another, and with them were self-interest and arrogance, cowardice and unfaithfulness, cruelty and bitterness. “These crucified Christ, aud it doesn't do to forget that they came | from the lips and lives of respectable I people, many of whom even were religious people. It is possible, mark I you, to be respectable and outwardly | religious and yet to harbour in our | minds thoughts and motives that sc; | themselves most impudently against i God. I “And Christ in accepting the Cross | revealed to us what God is. All His i life He was revealing what God is, i but on the Cross, the supreme crisis, |He revealed Him most vividly and i plainly. j Good Friday. It matters a lot to you j what God is like. You are living in | God's world. You are God’s child. I Every hour your life is in the hands of God. You may not realise it. but i so it is. and that life is a trust for i which one day you must give account, plow, then, will God deal with you? : You have your sins. Those sins you : may try to keep to yourself, but they ; are there. Sometimes they ache within you. Sometimes in dark moments they j rise up ancl, mock you. Always, i always, as you know quite well, they | are holding you back from what you | ought to be. from what at your best j you would like to be.

What God is Like What then, is God like, before whom at this moment you stand and j to whom in a l'ew short years you 1 oust go? The Cross will tell you. There you will find love beyond all human love, love that shows itself, even, when it is being reviled and rejected, in a most wonderful patience, in a sympathy that understands us so deeply that it stretches out both arms 10 share our burdens with us, in service most willingly offered, though 11 is God Who is serving us, in a sacrifice most gladly accepted, if so be love lifted up can draw us to itself. ‘‘That is what God is like. Don’t you think that is worth thinking about? Don't you think that it calls for some response from you, some thankfulness. some prayerfulness, some resolve by God’s help to live your own life in that same spirit? It is a troubled world thru we are all in and a weary world, troubled and weary because the spirit of the men and women in it is ;:o often a wrong spirit. "I think that we are beginning lo realise that. T think we are not so proud as we used to be of the world as we have made it. I think that in our hearts we have grown f ired of all this selfishness and suspicion, this pride and prejudice and enmity, which poison life and separate us, nation from nation, man from man. one from the other. We look anxiously here and there for a more excellent way. Here it is, the way of God, the way marked out for the children of God, the only way that can bring us into fellowship and into peace. Do think of that. Christianity, remember, has'not failed. It has never yet been tried. liaised From the Dead "Then on Easter Day you will think of the power that raised Jesus Christ triumphantly from the dead, the same power that can raise ns. not. only when we die, but now from our dead selves to higher things. You need that power and so do 1. The tragedy of life so often is in its weakness You and I have our ideals, our longing for what is noblest and best, vet

we seem lo have no power to bring that best out of us and to make such dreams come true. The power of the Resurrection can do it for us if we think of it enough and believe in it enough Lo open oul- hearts to its coming and its rule.” —An address bv W. 11. Elliott. M.A.. Chaplain to the King, supplied by the Gisborne Ministers’ Association.