First things first: opening hours for Dock Cafe over Easter

We’re open as normal from 11-5 on Saturday 30th March

(And our Easter Dock Walk will take place on Sunday afternoon at 3:33)

Then we’re closed for Easter hols on Mon 1st & Tue 2nd April.

And then back to normal from Wed 3rd onwards.

And don’t forget that Saturday is Market Stall day at The Dock – so tomorrow as well as tea, coffee, hot chocolate, fresh locally-made sandwiches and scones and soup and scrumptious treats, Colin’s unique Aloe Vera products will be available at the pop-up market.  What better way to spend a Saturday?

And  now on to higher things:  at Easter we tell the story of the most awful, wonderful, scandalous, glorious, world-changing event in the vast sweep of human history: the cruel crucifixion of God’s son on a dusty hill far away.  Countless millions of lives have been transformed, sins have been forgiven, hearts have soared free, nations have been changed, history has shifted, because of that one event.

We commemorate the cross with jewellery around our necks, we mark it on babies’ heads at baptism when life begins, we mark it on headstones and grave sites when life ends.  It is the pivotal event, the hinge point of history.   And some people watched it happen.

I had the privilege of being asked to do a broadcast for BBC Radio Ulster this morning, and used it to ‘walk a mile in the shoes’ of those people – you can find the broadcast on iPlayer here.

We also marked Good Friday at St Clements, the friendly Belfast parish that keeps me out of mischief on a Sunday, by watching this beautifully-crafted video I stumbled across on YouTube.  It’s a dramatised presentation of a sermon by the incomparable S.M.Lockridge, and it’s well worth a few minutes of your time over this Easter weekend:

(I especially love the moment where the person transcribing Lockridge’s words for the subtitles is momentarily flummoxed by an old-style-gospel-preacher exclamation – before settling for “oooooooh!” for the subtitles!