We can see the better days now on the horizon

After a long and testing winter which has taken such a toll on us all, it feels as though we have turned a corner. After the darkness, after all, comes the dawn.

For many, the coming of spring in this year of all years has marked a moment where we can perhaps give in to the hope that the worst of the shared ordeal of the pandemic is now behind us.

For Christians, the season of Easter is about taking comfort in the resurrection of Jesus, but even non-believers can share in and take strength from the new life emerging in the natural world around us. Monday’s reopening of town centre businesses was another sign of life returning amid the lengthening days.

How it cheered us all to see enterprises put into an involuntary hibernation by the Covid-19 lockdown open up again, with shoppers once more in the high street and pub-goers able to share the conviviality of a face-to-face pint.

The death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, has been a reminder for the nation that even those seemingly-eternal figures of our national life are not forever. All our lives, just as the seasons, are merely passing.

Collective mourning for the Prince - and for all those lost to the coronavirus - means our joy at the easing of lockdown is tempered by sadness.

But while we must never forget, we can still move forward. Some scars of the pandemic are deep, but they will hopefully fade.

Even in times of loss we can still take comfort in the shoots of new life and of recovery which we see all around us. Better days are on the horizon and we are walking towards them together.

‘Even in times of loss we can still take comfort in the shoots of new life and of recovery’