Zetland Park Methodist Church Pastoral Letters
April 2013
"Look with expectation"
How many times have I travelled on the train between Darlington and Redcar in the last 18 months? On average at least 5 to 6 times a week both ways, for something like 47 weeks a year - that has to be over 750 times! And yet only this morning I saw something I had never noticed before. In what remains of the old shunting yards west of Middlesbrough Station there are the clear marks of the foundations of a huge railway turntable - I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it before, even if often enough it is either dark or I have my head down reading, typing or even praying (though most often I pray with eyes wide open looking at the world!) when travelling on the train. "So what", I hear you say?
Well, by the time you read this we will likely be in the season of Easter, that period from Easter Sunday to Pentecost … that season we have been through year-in, year-out for as long as we have lived (or been a Christian).
With the same story told over and again it is easy to think that we will never see anything new in it, but as the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus reminds us, there can be new things to see and to discover in the most unlikely of places and times. However, the story of the road to Emmaus also reminds us we have to be prepared to be open to those new discoveries - it was only because those two disciples asked the stranger that they had met on the road in for a meal that they met the risen Christ!
So as you celebrate the Easter season - please, not just on Easter Day but for
all six weeks - look with expectation for the deeper truths that you still have
to discover about the presence of the risen Christ:
Amongst us - his church,
With you, - his follower and
In the world - where he is encouraging us to go in His name.
Look out for him when you come in tired from your activities or when you meet in fellowship with others, for those are the very times when Jesus came to his disciples, meeting them on the lakeshore after a long night's work and in the locked house where they cowered with fear! And remember, it is rarely in the perfect world that we see the risen Christ come to us, but rather in the mayhem and mess of life, with its problems, challenges and pain that He comes to encourage and embolden us.