As part of his Easter Sermon, the Rt Rev Dr John Armes, Bishop of Edinburgh, says:

“When catastrophe strikes we always have a choice about how to react. We can be beaten by it and embittered, or we can allow it to be transformed into something positive. This is why I was so impressed by the families of those who died in the Westminster terrorist attack. Kurt Cochrane’s family, for example, were devastated by his death but they weren’t overwhelmed. They stood together and celebrated that now the whole world knew what a wonderful person he was.

“Easter invites us to be life-givers, to refuse to allow anything to kill the humanity in us and to resist anyone who demeans or dehumanises others. This means that we must be people of flesh not of stone. To be flesh means to feel, to bruise and to bleed. There’s no way round that; but then it’s the way God chose, the way in which God in Jesus became fully human, fully alive. This is God’s Word to the world: spoken in the cries of a baby on a cold night in Bethlehem, spoken to Mary early one morning in Jerusalem, and spoken to us.

“This is the challenge of Easter.”