Thought for the week: Looking back at precious memories made over the Easter period

Maundy Thursday brought a couple of photographs of folk from Northern Ireland who had been invited to the service attended by Her Majesty the Queen. That evening produced the most high-profile ecumenical witness when leaders from other churches joined the bishop of Down and Dromore the Rev David McClay. Following a notable act of worship in the Great Hall at Stormont they lit together a beacon symbolising a prayer of hope and uniting the event at Stormont with similar beacons lit by the overwhelming majority of parish churches in the diocese during the week after St Patrick’s Day.

Good Friday brought out inter-denominational processions and most I saw had crosses. My prize for the greatest number of identifiable clergy would go to Lisburn where they once again processed through the city centre and churches.

The church abroad was not forgotten. I was delighted to see the Mothers’ Union in a diocese had joined with a church missionary agency to do a joint presentation of their work in Sudan where danger is seldom far away and yet, mercifully, our people offer for long-term and short-term service. And their folk here at home are on prayerful tender hooks.

There was beauty, skill and faith in a new stained glass window of the crucifixion which was blessed on Easter Day in a Clogher church in the presence of donor family members in memory of faithful stalwarts now in the innermost presence of God. It is a wonderful visual reminder of what is at the centre of the Christian faith. There were photographs of decorated floral crosses and of early Easter morning outdoor services which were impossible to pass by quickly.

The photograph which really caught me was from Seagoe parish. The rector in full flight with arms in the air, smile on his face, and he was not in any way constricted by being properly attired in cassock, surplice and scarf. He was surrounded between the choir stalls and the front of the aisle with children who were all in a happy mood - a scene of unadulterated joy as they participated fully in the Easter Day worship.

It brought back an old memory from my decades in childrens’ ministry development where an expert outlined all the possibilities he had seen both working and failing but who stressed - anywhere I saw children responding in faith, I saw enthusiasm because children respond above all else to enthusiasm.

Thanks and blessings to all those whose enthusiasm spoke to me over Easter.