THINGS certainly look bad in the countryside. If it has not been the wettest winter on record, then at least it feels like it, with flooded fields and crops of potatoes rotting in the ground, followed by swine fever and now the foot and mouth epidemic around, even in our area.

With gloom among farmers whose stock has got the disease and fear among those who wait to see if their animals will be the next, one wonders if the bleak outlook will ever change.

But then the daffodils emerged and bloomed, the forsythia blossomed, mating birds sang and - dare I say it - the lambs were born.

"At last," said our visitor, "spring has come."

Sometimes when the darkness of despair and depression is experienced, it is difficult to imagine a way out.

The friends of Jesus must have felt that with his arrest, mock trials and execution, all was lost.

All that they had planned and worked for had been snuffed out. Things looked black and they could see no hope in the future.

It was at this point that Jesus came to them in a way that they had never seen before.

Despite his death on the cross, he was alive and through his coming to them he transformed their despair to hope, their sadness to joy and their darkness to light.

The Easter experience which came to them is one which all can share. And especially to the farming folk with all their needs, this message comes: out of death, he will bring life and hope.

Stan Taylor

Alcester Street Methodist Church