ELEANOR HALL: Christian leaders say hope is at the heart of their Easter messages this year.
But in a rebuke to the Rudd Government and its message to Australians to spend more to assist the economy, Melbourne's Anglican archbishop is warning people to start saving and to look after one another, not just themselves, during these difficult times.
In Melbourne, Alison Caldwell reports.
ALISON CALDWELL: Hope and renewal are at the heart of Anglican Archbishop Philip Freier's Easter message.
The Archbishop of Melbourne says tens of thousands of Australians are facing particularly difficult times ahead in the wake of the bushfires and the global financial crisis.
PHILIP FREIER: I think in the present situation of the world we're clearly in a place of much more uncertainty than we have been in recent years and I think that many of the things that we thought were, you know, conventional wisdoms, ways in which we could be assured of our financial prosperity and a whole lot of areas are much less certain for people. And I think for many people that will make this Easter quite different to the ones they've had over the last 10 or 15 years.
ALISON CALDWELL: And what will you be advising them as a way of dealing with that?
PHILIP FREIER: Well I think increasingly we have put our frame of reference for our lives on things about our prosperity, things about our comfort. And I think that the message of Christianity is always one that there is a reference point with God and God's love for us which goes beyond those things.
And I think that Easter for me is always a good opportunity of opening up this horizon of God, God's claim over our life, the purposes of our life, and finding within that a source of hope even in our difficult or bleak times.
More here-
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2539706.htm
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