Some day when you have a bit of time, take out an old atlas and look at a map of the Pacific Ocean.  If you look hard-you may need a magnifying glass-you will discover a little speck called Easter Island.  It is about 2,000 miles west of Chile and was named on Easter Day 1772 by a Dutch navigator, Admiral Roggeveen.

 

        A very suggestive name, Easter Island.  It ought to remind us that the day for which it was named is not an island, but part of the mainland of human life.  All too often Easter is thought of as an island.  We have made it an island in the calendar, quite off the shore of other days.  In a couple of weeks, here  comes Easter. For many it will be time for the annual visit to church in holiday mood and dress.  Time for familiar hymns and anthems.  The sign in Sunday School which says "Christ is Risen" will be taken down in a week and tucked into a dusty corner.  In the thinking of many Easter is an island to visit once a year and then its back to the Mainland.

 

        But it is not an island.  The Easter faith comes close to every hour of life.

Easter enlarges words like man, woman, child, home, life and death.  It tells us that though the mainland may treat us as a number, we are not.  It affirms that we are children of God, we have a place in God's mind and are encircled in God's love.  If any you have seen and remember the movie Quo Vadis, Deborah Kerr plays a young girl who is almost torn apart by lions who were let loose on Christians put in a Roman arena.  In an interview she was asked if she was not afraid of the lions who came bouncing gaily in her direction.  She said "No, for I am one of the actresses who read the script through to the end, and I knew that Robert Taylor would rescue me in time."

 

        Easter means that we need not be afraid, for we have read the script through to the end, "Christ is Risen."  It comes out all right.  May God's blessings touch each of you on Easter day and for through all of the great fifty days.

                                                                                Shalom,

                                                                                 Pastor Kurt+