LAST October I went with Sally, my wife, to visit Zimbabwe.

It is a country in which she was brought up and where I taught in a school more than 45 years ago.

Two things struck us on our visit – the grim conditions people were living in, starvation in the rural areas, the sewage system broken down in so many places, and much fear.

Fear of the secret police, fear of the regime, fear of the future. For so many there was a real sense of darkness.

Then there was the faithfulness and the joy of the Christians whom we met, their total trust in God and their ability to praise him in music, dance and worship.

On Good Friday, Christians all over the world recall the death of Jesus Christ on a cross outside Jerusalem.

Here He accepted the full weight of the world's sin, all that we human beings do to separate ourselves from God and each other – a very dark moment indeed.

On Easter Day, Christians all over the world celebrate the fact of Jesus's Resurrection from the dead, which makes plain that evil and death have been defeated and that in Jesus Christ there is new life. This is exactly what we experienced in Zimbabwe.

In October of this year, I will be retiring as Bishop of Warrington, in the Diocese of Liverpool.

It has been a huge privilege to exercise this ministry over the last nine years.

One of the abiding memories will always be of those people who know the darkness, and live in the light of the new life that comes because of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.