By Rev Conrad Hicks

For Lent this year, we decided to give up using electric lights and devices for an hour each evening. It was following a suggestion that this season, traditionally associated with giving things up, could be used to reduce our reliance on electricity and subsequent carbon footprint.

So, we sat each evening in candle-light, having to talk instead of being on the computer or watching TV. Though the darkness was limiting – an hour without a cup of tea as we couldn’t put on the kettle – the candles flickered and danced and the light they produced enabled us to see each other.

I was recently clearing my Mum’s house. She died late last year. I found all the sympathy cards she had received when my Dad had died, aged 61. Among them were a series of cards from the Minister who had married Sonia and I – not my parents’s minister. Each card was sent during the 9 months my father was dying; each one said: ‘We lit a candle today and prayed for you’.

In John 8:12, Jesus says, ‘I AM the Light of the world.’ We are told in John 1:4-5, ‘…in Him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.’

In John 5:25 Jesus says, ‘the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.’ This prophecy is fulfilled in the story at the heart of the Gospel when Lazarus hears the voice of Jesus from the tomb, is brought back to life and comes out into the light. As Jesus prepares His disciples for the journey to Lazarus’s tomb, He says, ‘Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world.’ (John 11:9)

Just before my father was diagnosed with cancer and given 9 months to live, an Anglican priest prayed for him and my father received a vision of heaven. Throughout those 9 months, he was filled with peace and told everyone, ‘I have seen heaven; I can’t wait to be with Jesus.’ The light of hope in the darkness of grief and pending separation.

These are difficult times: Times of isolation, separation, grief, anxiety and death. But we believe that the wilderness of Lent and the violence of Holy Week lead to the Resurrection Hope of Easter Day. And we believe that the One in the wilderness, the One crucified and risen, is the Light of the world; the darkness could not extinguish the Light. And He is with us.

Rev. Conrad Hicks