Only after I had decided to go plastic-free did I discover that it was the latest trend, and everywhere on the media were people offering tips on where to get shampoo in solid bars, cheese wrapped in paper and fill-your-own laundry liquid. On one level it’s fun – a sort of life-hack challenge – but sometimes it’s really tiresome and expensive, like when you pop in for some cheese and the only non-plastic-wrapped fromage is an artisan cheddar in fancy wax, with price to match.

So why bother? It’s time-consuming and expensive, and every time you think you’ve cracked it, you discover there is plastic in yet another thing – teabags, oysters, bottled water.  Why not leave it to the big guys, who are making the money, to sort this one for us? So much more effective than our social media campaigns and home-grown solutions?

Because history teaches us that changing society for the better always starts the little guys, struggling on, unrewarded, derided, ignored, even persecuted. Wilberforce spent twenty years labouring for abolition. The suffragettes practised defiance for decades. For years Nelson Mandela languished in prison.  Jesus was a voice crying in the wilderness,  who died an ignominious death and should have been forgotten by history. 

But Easter tells us a different story.

No matter how bleak and hopeless the outlook, no matter how useless the cause, no matter how enormous the task, Easter says: Have faith! Jesus died, and his brave message of love, forgiveness and new life seemed doomed to die with him. But instead, thousands of years later, billions of people all over the world will sing out this unlikely anthem: Jesus lives!

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