Christian Comment with Gareth Zimmerman, Local Preacher, Stroud Methodist Church

PERHAPS, like me, you have an allotment or a vegetable patch and with spring here you have prepared the soil and sown seeds.

This year I am better organised and already have rows of seedlings – broad beans, spinach, turnips, peas, lettuce, potatoes and leeks, as well as my first harvest of radishes!

I always marvel at the miracle of a dry, dead-looking seed being put into the dark soil and producing a plant with many of its own seeds, and am reminded of Jesus' words in John 12:24 of The Living Bible: “Jesus replied that the time had come for him to return to his glory in heaven, and that, 'I must fall and die like a kernel of wheat that falls into the furrows of the earth. Unless I die I will be alone—a single seed. But my death will produce many new wheat kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives' ”.

We have just celebrated Easter, with different meanings for each of us. For the Saxon pagans, Eastre was the goddess of fertility, celebrated in the spring when plants sprout, and birds and animals produce their young. When Christianity came to these shores, the resurrection of Jesus Christ was seen to have parallels with nature, hence the symbolism of the Easter bunny representing the speed at which rabbits breed, and Easter eggs, developing over the centuries into decorated hens' eggs and eventually eggs made of chocolate in the 1800s.

Unfortunately, commercialism and secularisation have clouded the true meaning of Easter – the miraculous resurrection of Jesus three days after his brutal execution we remembered on Good Friday.

Jesus' appearances after his resurrection were witnessed by many different people – ordinary people like you and me - as recorded in the four Gospels, which make fascinating and compelling reading.

Because Jesus died on the cross, he took our sins upon himself, the sins that exclude us from fellowship with God, our Creator and heavenly Father.

Jesus died and conquered death on our behalf and continues to invite you, through his resurrection, to be one of the harvest of new lives.