Hope, Easter and Dominica's future

Easter has always reminded Christians of the unrelenting darkness that currently surrounds the world. Every day we are bombarded with news stories of rampant violence, war, diseases, genocide, rape, hunger and ignorance. So no one should blame skeptics for believing that God may have fallen asleep on the job or probably He has given up on this hapless world. But Easter reminds us that God is very much alive, that there is hope for those who believe and act on that belief.

In the sphere of everyday living, Easter represents hope for Dominicans especially during this period of increasing crime rates, high unemployment, and a dearth of integrity and honesty of our elected officials. If we have faith in the resilience of the people of Dominica we know that our political and economic resurrection will come soon.

So we join more than one billion Christians around the world, including about 30 thousands here in Dominica, to celebrate Easter on Monday next week. Christians who will participate in the event will again wonder at the power of the living God who came from the Father, lived among us, died and rose from the dead to save the world from sin and perpetual darkness. This is the essence of the Christian faith and the essential meaning of Easter.

As we stated in earlier editorials, every year during this period, Christians celebrate the resurrection- God raising His Son Jesus from the grave; but to Christians, Easter also symbolizes the fact that the majestic God can also work wonders in transforming their lives. Christians believe fervently that if they walk like Christ and live like Christ, they too, will rise from their grave sometime in the future as Christ did at Easter many years ago; because Christ is the Hope of mankind, the Solid Rock on which we all need to build our future on earth and in Heaven.

The story of Easter began on Good Friday when Jesus Christ was crucified and buried. The apostle Luke wrote that on the first day of the week at dawn, the women would come to the tomb, taking with them the spices that they had prepared. When they arrived they found the stones had been rolled away from the entrance of the tomb and the body was missing. But before He died, Jesus stated that He would have vacated His grave three days after His death and His followers believed Him. They had faith that the mystery of the resurrection was part of that large and wondrous plan that God has for His creation.

Some persons argue that without the resurrection, Christ would be just another human being who was crucified and died. In fact, the credibility of the entire teachings of the Christian church rests heavily on the fact of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If, for argument sake, Christ did not rise from the grave then Christianity would be a massive fraud with unprecedented implications. But, thank God, there is abundant evidence from the records of the early church and from archaeologists that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a fact of history.

Easter then can be compared to rain which lifts Christians in Dominica and worldwide out of their daily draught and frustrations. The celebration of that event can free Christians from the rigors of everyday life and help them become fully human and to understand the meaning of life. This is what Easter is all about; this is what Christianity is all about. At Easter, Christians remember God's power and the potential for life-giving transformation.

But some Christians are worried that Easter, as well as other important Christian holidays, such as Carnival and Christmas, is now regarded as another occasion for fetes, for getting drunk and disorderly. Apparently, we have forgotten the meaning of these Christian events and of Life.