Let’s ponder the mystery of life returning:  

Life returning confuses us.

With no body in the grave, the disciple women and men, the soldiers, the authorities were all in disarray. Jesus’ followers were ambivalent: joy and hope, yes, but also denial, doubt and chilling fear.

How to hold all these? How to live on in the present with such ambiguity: generosity, suffering, waiting, love, anxiety and joy … everything changing, absence, certainties gone.

Where are there ambiguities in the life I am living?   Where did there used to be certainty, but now unknowing?

How do I hold the tension of the violence of the food chain alongside our trust in a loving Creator God?

Where are the signs of hope? Of the reign of the loving God being at hand – ‘now-but-not-yet?

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He moana pukepuke e ekeinga e te waka

A choppy sea can be navigated

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The Lord’s Prayer    (an alternative version from the New Zealand Prayer Book 2005)

Eternal Spirit,

Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver,

Source of all that is and shall be,

Mother and Father of us all,

Loving God in whom is heaven –

The hallowing of your name echo through the universe;

The way of your justice be followed by all peoples on Earth;

Your heavenly will be done by all created beings;

Your commonwealth of peace and freedom sustain our hope and come on Earth.

With the bread we need for today, feed us;

In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us;

In times of temptation and test, strengthen us;

From trials too great to endure, spare us;

From the grip of all that is evil, free us.

For you reign in the glory of the power that is Love,

Now and forever.                     AMEN

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