Easter reflection from SERVE Chairman

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SERVE Chairperson, Gerry O’Connor shares a Spring/ Easter reflection for SERVE volunteers & others.

 

“All SERVE’S partners were founded by groups of people who allowed themselves to become fully aware of uncomfortable truths. The founding personalities dreamt of being ‘leaven in the dough of movements against abject poverty’.

 

I am pleased to have this opportunity to write to you, as you, prepare to celebrate the season of Easter.

 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer the renowned anti- Nazi dissident, was full of resurrection hope. He encouraged people:

 

  • To dare what is right not what fancy may tell you.

 

  • To valiantly grasp occasions, not cravenly doubting.

 

  • To understand that freedom only comes through deeds, not through thoughts taking wing.

 

  • To faint not nor fear but go out to the storm and the action.

 

Easter is a desperately needed reminder every year that pain, loss, and death do not get the final word. The resurrection of Jesus Christ teaches us, that there always is and always will be hope.

 

An Easter disposition helps us to live by the motto: Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future.

 

The great gift of Easter is hope.

 

On Easter Monday, April 5th, the second ever International Conscience Day, will be celebrated. Easter says you can put truth in the grave, but it won’t stay there. Conscience frees truth from darkness. Conscience expands our horizon. Conscience is the foundation of social solidarity.

 

In the dialogue between religion and development, there is an increasing emphasis, on the mantra: ‘Be spiritual- act rationally’.

 

This, April 5th, let us rationally, inform, our-selves, about the cruel plight, faced by the communities that SERVE partner with, in Africa and Asia- and go even further, and learn about the plight of children in Yemen, and women in Tigray, in the North of Ethiopia.

 

Easter hopes to all in the SERVE family, at home and abroad.”