An Easter Message from Our Founder, Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow

I read a recent study that surprised scientists by showing that the roots of trees continue to grow and develop during the winter – even when the parts above ground are dormant. I’m not a botanist but this makes sense to me as, once again, I watch countless thousands of buds becoming leaves on the old beech tree near our house this springtime – and notice its branches are growing even further out into the field on the other side of the fence. It is surely the unseen growth of the roots in recent months that is making this possible.

For a while now – both in the world and within Mary’s Meals – it has felt like we’ve been living through a long ‘winter’. Wars, the threat of wars, financial hardship, rising costs, and climate change are just some of the things creating fear and making it very difficult for us to expand our work to new children.

But now, we are at last experiencing a ‘springtime’. Each week we are adding new schools to our program, and in all sorts of different places children are lining up for Mary’s Meals for the first time. The branches of Mary’s Meals are growing outwards again rapidly and soon, please God, we will be able to publicize an amazing new number of children fed.

The roots of our old tree never doubted that spring would come. And I thank God that you didn’t either. We can see our beautiful tree growing again, and laughing children are sprouting now, because of your heartfelt labor during that winter period. God forbid that there would ever be single bleak, winter’s day, when we stop hoping – and thus fail the springtime. Imagine a winter without an end. 

This is why the word hope has always been so important to us. The Mary’s Meals family lives hope by firmly believing in a better day, even when the outward signs might suggest otherwise – and by working tirelessly for it. Hope is a choice. And when we decide to serve this mission, we chose hope. 

Of course, Easter, for those of us who believe Jesus rose from the dead this day, is a very special celebration of another aspect of Hope – one that believes an eternal victory over death has already been won for us.

But we all live and serve hope in different ways. Some of you are like those roots in winter – quiet and unassuming – doing what you can to ensure that children can eat and grow, without ever looking for any thanks. Others among you are more like the daffodils that were in full bloom around our old tree long before the buds even began to appear – working with infectious joy that encourages us all and helps to sustain our hope as we near the end of that long winter. 

And I think that each of you, regardless of your personal beliefs, or your particular role in the Mary’s Meals family, can joyfully celebrate hope together this Easter. In villages across Haiti, Malawi, Zambia, South Sudan, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Madagascar and other countries too, children and their parents are living lives transformed by a hope which is provided and sustained by each meal served in their school. We should celebrate those meals together! And we should celebrate the profound goodness of this Mary’s Meals family that, regardless of the season, continues to ensure that hope prevails – a hope needed in a particular way by the children we serve but by our whole human family too.

Thank you for your choice, for your faithfulness, and for every single thing you do for the children of Mary’s Meals.

Happy Easter!
Magnus