As I write, Easter is rushing towards us, like a … great big rushing thing. Like a big wave, like a herd of rampaging wildebeest…All right, enough of the desperate search for the right image. Let’s just say that, earlier than any year since 1913 (do please rush to check that, if you are of the anorak species), Lent - and therefore Easter - has come around so quickly that I’m struggling to adjust. Can I have a bit longer to recover from Christmas? NO! (I‘m talking, of course, about recovering theologically, adjusting from all that white Incarnation stuff to all the purple Penitence and red Suffering - rather than just getting rid of ten pounds’ excess baggage around the middle. Well, all right, that too.)
No, no. The need to face up to yourself doesn’t always come about at the most convenient moment. If we weren’t hurried into it, caught off balance (or caught red-handed) we’d have time to prepare our defence, sweep up the most obvious mess, lock away the really bad stuff…and so, while God is never going to be fooled by our clumsy attempts at deception, we could escape the long, hard, painful look in the mirror that is part of our Lenten work. God knows us, but, given enough warning, we can find ways of avoiding self-knowledge.    
 So maybe it’s a good thing that this Lent has given me a bit of a hurry-up. I don’t know what the fruits will be, and it could be just the glorious weather, but I’m feeling more alive than I have for a while. Not better as a person, not more faithful and prayerful, but more me. More accepting of the whole of me (or rather, as much of the iceberg as I can see at the moment); more aware that I don’t need to clean up my act in order to be with God. And, unexpectedly, I find myself saying to people in church that looking a bit deeper inside isn’t just about digging for dirt - rather, in each of us, there is a beauty and a goodness that just needs the dirt scraping off it. And Lent is the time to do this. In you and me, this Easter self, this alive person, is waiting to be discovered, thanks to the endlessly renewing love shown on the Cross and bursting from the tomb.
 Wishing you Easter joy!