The news on Palm Sunday from around the world was bleak.

Here in Bermuda worshippers from the cathedral carried palm branches from City Hall to the cathedral in joyful procession, while many others later enjoyed the annual Palm Sunday walk. But in Gaza the al Ahli hospital was bombed.

Ukraine saw the worst bombing of this year. While worshippers gathered in Sumy, bombs fell around them devastating the lives of many.

So began what is the holiest week for Christians around the world.

In these pictures we have the dichotomy of the human condition that the Easter weekend brings to our broken world.

Firstly, we see the hardness and cruelty of the human heart laid bare — in the cruel and seemingly senseless execution of one who was the most innocent and beautiful person who ever lived.

This is an extreme example of a universal daily human problem experienced in families, communities and between nations.

In our chaotic world of today where fear and uncertainty abound, it can expose the worst of human nature. But over and against that we also see the love of God poured out for us, that Jesus willingly went the way of a cross to pay the price for our sins so that we might know God’s forgiveness and experience new life.

We see the hopelessness that death and violence brings to so many, but in the resurrection we also see that the last word is neither of these things — but what is described as a living hope acquired and guaranteed for us by Jesus’s resurrection for those who place their trust in him.

In a fractured world of vying interests we see in the church the arrival of a new kind of community, not divided on the basis of colour, race, class, education or gender, but united by the common awareness of God’s loving and healing presence with us — that enables worship to go on, despite the struggles we face — for there to be joy and peace, fellowship and friendship in a blessed community.

In Bermuda, life is all around us in nature as spring erupts — Bermudiana wave their purple heads, Easter lilies like trumpets resound with glory — but we need to find a new kind of life to sustain us and to enable our better selves to come forth to supplant the pains and divisions we still have.

Jesus and his death and resurrection can enable that to happen.

I hope any pray that every family and home would know something of that newness. It’s only a prayer away.

As the sun rises on Easter Sunday, may its warmth and the joy of being with others, family, friends and strangers, draw you to its source — the God of Heaven and Earth, the conqueror of death and sin, the bringer of forgiveness and hope and a new day.

May you and yours be blessed once again this Easter tide and every day.