Last year we spent quite a bit of time at our Little Big Church looking at chocolate and at different sweets, including Liquorice Allsorts. Garry even wrote us some new songs on these themes – telling us God’s love is better than any chocolate and any ice-cream or cake and teaching us that it takes all sorts to make the church of God complete.  Easter is a time when traditionally we get chocolate Easter eggs – symbolising new life – and other forms of chocolate, so tonight we explored the Easter story through M & Ms.

M & Ms are multi-coloured button-shaped chocolates, each of which has the letter ‘M’ printed on it in white on one side. They were first made in America in 1941 and they have different fillings, including peanuts, peanut butter, almond, pretzels, caramel and crispy, dark chocolate, all covered in milk chocolate. Last year, a fudge brownie centre was introduced in the United States, but I don’t think these are available in the UK yet. M and Ms are the flagship product of the Mars Wrigley Confectionery division of Mars, Incorporated and are a very popular chocolate treat. There’s even an M & M Store in Leicester Square in London which has over 100 M & M’s selections to choose from!

We looked at a poem by Bethany Darwin which looks at how this letter M can tell the Easter story to us:

“These sweeties tell a story,

The best you’ll ever hear.

This story tells of Jesus dying on a cross

So we can be brought near.

So hold them and turn them

And you will see

The ‘M’ becomes a ‘W’, an ‘E’ and then a ‘3.’

The ‘E’ stands for ‘Easter’…

God’s everlasting love and His eternal plan.

It reminds us of the cross and how God rescued sinful man.

The ‘3’ represents the 3 days Jesus spent in the grave;

It tells us by His death, His children He did save.

The ‘M’ reminds us of the mercy

The Messiah showed as He died in our place,

And the miracle of the resurrection

So we can see Him face to face.

The ‘W’ reminds us that He alone

Is worthy of our worship and our praise

And that He calls us to be His witnesses

Around the world for all our days.”

This morning on Easter Sunday, Garry spoke about ‘The Light In The Grave.’ He talked about how mankind had originally known God as a friend, how Adam would meet with God in the garden of Eden, but with sin came the loss of connection and darkness, spoiling that beautiful relationship. Just as printed photos fade over time, so too as generations passed, mankind’s relationship with God became more distant.

God has always been a God of revelation, however, and His truth is linked to light (Ps 19:8). 1 John 1:5 reminds us that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. Paul tells us that God lives in unapproachable light (1 Tim 6:15-16) and John’s vision of the resurrected Christ in Rev 1:12-16 is full of the imagery of light (His eyes were like blazing fire; His feet like glowing bronze; His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.) The light in Jesus brings life (John 6:68, John 1:9, Isaiah 9:6). Gloom and darkness are dispelled by the light of God, and as Is 42:7 reminds us, this light would include Gentiles as well as Jews.

With the Incarnation, we see the arrival of the Light, for Jesus is the light of the world. (John 8:12) The enemy does not want us to see the light (John 3:19-20) for light reveals what is. In the darkness, our imaginations can see monsters in the shadows, but light removes the darkness and shows us plainly what is, the reality. In John 1:1-3 we see life and light in Jesus, and He illuminates, reveals truth and dispels the darkness. The enemy wanted to extinguish His life and light and at the cross thought he had succeeded, but as 1 Cor 2:8 reminds us, he and the earthly rulers just did not understand God’s reality. Instead of being the end, the grave became a beginning, a doorway not the end. The grave was illuminated by the light and now ‘the God who died came back to life/ And everything is changed.’ (‘Christ Is Risen’, Phil Wickham)

The disciples who had been huddled in a room, fearful of the Jews and afraid for their own lives, were transformed by the resurrected Saviour. They understood that death did not have the final say or victory, that we are also promised new life in Him. (2 Tim 2:11) The light in the grave now blazes forth and reminds us that our future is safe in Jesus, the Overcomer.

The Bible is full of names. It’s full of genealogies and lists of people doing different jobs. Some of these names are hard for us to pronounce and many of us skip over these lists of names when we read the Bible because we find them boring and irrelevant. Eugene Peterson reminds us, however, that “the biblical fondness for genealogical lists is not a pedantic antiquarianism, it is a search for personal involvement, a quest for a sense of personal place in the web of relationships in which God fashions salvation.” (Eugene Peterson, ‘Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work’, P 107)

All of us need personal involvement in God’s story. All of us need a sense of personal place, a sense that who we are and what we are doing is crucially important, that we are not just ‘marking time’ on earth, that our existence matters. One of the most debilitating elements of lockdown has been that our sense of purpose has been drastically affected in a negative manner.

In the midst of all this, many people in the Dearne area and beyond have been using this time purposefully and creatively. They have been involved in the Dearne Churches Together Easter project ‘Whispers of Love’, making and decorating hearts to give out to our communities as a prophetic reminder involving 1054 hearts and reaching 9 care homes/ assisted living places that God loves us and that Easter marks the height of that love as Jesus died for our sins and rose again to bring us everlasting life.

I don’t know the names of all the people who have been involved in this project. God does. But in true Biblical manner, here is the list of names that I do know who have chosen to work with us to take God’s love in visible form to our communities and to remind everyone that they are loved by God. My heartfelt thanks to all who took this crazy dream to heart and turned it into a prophetic reality. My thanks to all for using their God-given talents and skills in so many different creative ways:

• Knitting

• Sewing

• Decoupage

• Painting (on wood, card, pebbles, glass pebbles)

• Encaustic Art (hot wax painting)

• Cross stitch

• Embroidery

• Beading

• Woodwork

Known Participants

• Alison Sykes

• Fiona Kouble

• Diane Webb

• Julie Turner

• Karen Dunn

• Katie Dunn

• Chris Taylor

• Jackie Kenning

• George

• Amanda Campbell

• Stacey Turner

• Esther Turner

• Rebekah Turner

• Garry Turner

• Janet Cobourne-Smith

• J-P Schreuder

• Herlen Schreuder

• Mackenzie Schreuder

• Tatijana Schreuder

• Pupils & Staff at Sacred Heart Primary School

• Charlotte Williams

• Children & Staff at Station House Community Association

• Jeanette Boulton

• Brenda Jones

• Joyce Kilner

• Andrea Calladine

• Ella

• Sharon Seaborne

• Dorothy Lees

• Pat Harris

• Roger Martin

• Sue Martin

• Jade Edmonds

• Brian Nelson (Encaustic Art Plus)

• Marie Nichols

• Mrs Young

• Marcia Tissington

• Tracy Stringfellow

Thank you to all, known and unknown to us, who contributed to this project and to all who are now busy making Pentecost doves of peace for our next Dearne Churches Together project!

Today we distributed the remaining hearts (about 600 in total) in Goldthorpe, Thurnscoe and Bolton-on-Dearne. Our thanks to all who helped from GPCC, the Salvation Army and Sacred Heart and to Andrea and her daughter Ella who came too. Here are some photos of the distribution.

We even met someone who had found hearts already to give to her family!

There were some festive sights as well.

We’ve had news of others finding hearts.

We are especially pleased that the shop Elmhurt’s is displaying our heart in its shop window:

‘To restore’ means ‘to return (someone or something) to a former condition, place, or position’ and is often used in the building trade to describe projects which return a house to its former glory. In effect, this is what God does to us; He restores us to relationship with Him, to fellowship with Him, bringing about reconciliation through the sacrificial death of His Son. As Aaron Shust puts it, ‘all that’s lost can be reclaimed.’ (‘You Redeem’) The plans of the enemy to take as many people with him away from God are ‘ruined, undone.’ We can enter into everything that God has for us; we can resume our identity as children of God and can know that we are now heirs with God and co-heirs with Christ. (Rom 8:17) Peter says that being restored makes us ‘strong, firm and steadfast’ (1 Pet 5:10); in other words, it becomes the foundation of our lives, the thing which enables us to stand and prevail, no matter what comes against us.

God Restores Our Souls (Ps 23:3)

The soul is the innermost part of a person, the ‘real us’, so to speak. It comprises our emotions and feelings and will; it’s intangible and invisible but an essential part of what it means to be human. Many years ago, there was an advert for Heineken beer which said, ‘Heineken refreshes the parts other beers cannot reach.’ Jesus is better than Heineken! He reaches the parts no one and nothing else can reach. We often think money, relationships, possessions, careers will satisfy us, but ultimately, only God can satisfy our souls. He provides the rest we need (spiritual rest or peace), the refreshment we need (promising us a banqueting feast like no other) and the replenishment that comes from His provision. (Phil 4:13)

God Restores Our Joy (Ps 51:12)

We can lose joy for many reasons. Sometimes (as in this case with David), it’s because of sin. Sometimes it’s because we have lost our spiritual perspective and are only looking at life from a human point of view, being weighed down by injustice, misery, hopelessness and fear. God’s joy, however, can be known in all circumstances and is the source of our strength. (Neh 8:10) We need to learn from children who can find joy in simple things (like rolling down a hill or writing a capital B!) Joy is the fuel which keeps us going and God is able to fill us with His joy.

God Restores Our Wasted Years (Joel 2:25)

In the middle of a passage about God’s judgment, seen through the ravages and famine caused by locusts, God promises restoration and hope, telling His people that ‘you will have plenty to eat, until you are full, and you will praise the name of the Lord your God, who has worked wonders for you.’ (Joel 2:26) God is able to use everything in our lives for good (Rom 8:28)/ No matter what shameful secrets we have in our past, no matter what we have done or has been done to us, God can restore the wasted years, the failures, the mistakes, the sins. Justification means it’s ‘just as if we had never sinned.’ We have robes of righteousness to put on; though our sins were as scarlet, now we are washed white as snow. (Is 1:18)