THE Bishop of Exeter, the Rt Rev Dr Mike Harrison, has shared his Easter message for 2026.

He writes: “I love seeing the first signs of spring and what could be more hopeful than the young lambs which are a familiar sight in fields across Devon at this time of year.

“However hard the winter has been, and I realise that it has been a tough one this year, when the sun finally comes out and the lambs are leaping it’s hard not to feel optimistic.

“There are other signs of hope and new beginnings in spring if you look for them.

“Let me tell you a story which speaks to our turbulent times. Back at the start of the 17th century, an 18-year-old boy, resting after being injured in battle, stared out of the window at a tree which at that time in winter was stripped of its leaves. He reflected that it would soon appear decked in flowers and fruits in spring.

“As he continued to mull this over, it impacted the young man deeply, so much so that he became convicted that this was one sign among many others in the created world of a God who could transform despair to hope, darkness to light and even death to life. Later this young French man became a monk and a saint of the Church – and took the name Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection.

“His experience reminds us that perhaps we sometimes think life is just about a set of problems to be solved, but it’s also, and perhaps more importantly, about a series of signs to be read.

“If the Easter story is true, and we have a God who raises Jesus from the dead, on Easter Day after being crucified on Good Friday, then we might expect the Father of Jesus, the Creator, to have put all sorts of signals in creation pointing to the possibility of this kind of transformation.

“And sure enough, when we look at creation we can see signs such as a tree in winter budding in spring. Or night becoming day. Or a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. Or an egg becoming a chick, an acorn becoming an oak tree – and the miracle of a newborn lamb.

“We think that because these are familiar happenings, or that because we are able to describe their transitions, we have somehow explained them away. But we have hardly begun to appreciate these signs, as Brother Lawrence did.

“Can despair be transformed into hope? Can hate be transformed into love? Can death be transformed into life? The God of Easter says: “You bet they can”.

“No wonder Jesus says to his disciples, for whom the penny is beginning to drop “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear” Matthew chapter 13 verse 16.

“You may be approaching this Easter in many different ways and through many different circumstances, but my prayer for you is that you will have time to pause a moment, as Brother Lawrence did, and have the chance to see and hear the signs of transformation and hope – the signals in creation – that God has placed all around us.

“May I wish you and those you hold dear, a very blessed and transformational Eastertide.”