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Good morning A few weeks ago, my mother died. Someone asked me recently how I was getting on.

‘Fine’, I replied ‘except for one thing that happened out of the blue which took me by surprise’. I was sorting through her clothes in order to take them to a charity shop, when I found some money in a coat pocket. It was only loose change, but for some odd reason it made me choke up and tears came into my eyes. Don’t ask me why!

Losing someone who has been close to you is never easy and yet it’s an experience which all of us must face as some stage. The familiar has gone. The opportunity to chat on the phone is no longer there and the comfort of some one who has known and loved you, is past.

John’s gospel tells how Jesus visited the grave of Lazarus his friend. After talking to the grieving sisters and seeing Lazarus' friends upset ‘Jesus wept’. It’s the shortest verse in the Bible and yet it speaks of his distress at death and that gives me comfort..

And I find comfort too in something else he said that same day: ‘I am the resurrection and the life’. Jesus said. ‘The person who believes in me will live, even though they die, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die’.

To place our hope and trust in the one who died but was raised again reminds me that while parting may be painful, it need not be forever.