Happy Easter everybody. This is a wonderful time of year because we celebrate the gift of new life. Not only are we enjoying the new life of spring, so vibrant and lush all about us, we are celebrating at Easter the new life of the resurrection that can turn us into new creations, into a new kind people changed by the spirit of Christ.

Some people make the mistake of seeing the resurrection as something that happens to them after death. This was the mistake Martha made when she told Jesus she believed in the resurrection on the last day, forgetting that the resurrection actually happens right now when you accept Jesus’s gift of new life.

I want to share with you on this Easter Sunday the real-life story of Alex Diel whose life was miraculously changed when he accepted Jesus’s gift of new life.

“In 1998, when I turned eleven, my family moved from Russia to Kassel in Germany. My Mother bought a used table for our house and in the drawer, there was a bible. How strange, it struck me, that people could still value, in this modern age of science and technology, a fairy-tale book like this? I felt confident I did not need this book to inspire me, but for some strange reason, I could not throw it away either. My idols were more down to earth, like punk-rap artists, and I listened to them all the time. I also followed their example, and fell into drugs, becoming more and more self-centered, hurting others, including my family, but especially myself.

“In 2003, when I was seventeen, I had an emotional meltdown and was admitted to a clinic for rehabilitation. I wanted to turn my life around, but when I was released from the clinic I turned again to drugs and fell back into my old ways. I had no will power or motivation to change my life around. But I had no idea either what I could do to change my life around. Around to what? I asked myself.

“Well, back to the clinic I went again, feeling like a lost cause, like a boat without a rudder, buffeted and tossed about by every pleasurable and passing wind. Then, one day as I was lying in bed feeling hopeless, I thought of the bible in that old table which my mother bought for our house. Could this be the answer to my problems? Was God, whom I refused to believe in, calling me back to Him like a wayward son? These thoughts came streaming through my mind and I couldn’t let go of them. I was so possessed by these thoughts that I asked my mother, when she came to visit me in hospital, if the old bible was still there in the table drawer where I found it six years ago? She said she didn’t know but that she’d look to see if it was still there.

“My mother returned to my bedside the following day, carrying the old bible. I was speechless, and was moved to tears by this unexpected miracle: the bible was still there waiting to be discovered after all those years. I began to read from this book, beginning with the good news of the gospel. A powerful feeling came over me that is indescribable to this day. I was buoyed by a sense of hope that I could live a new life as I read the account of Jesus’s life. His words spoke to me directly, and brought me healing. I could hardly take it in: that Jesus died for my sins, that I could rise to a new life with Him, and that I could love my enemies.

“Wow! I could love my enemies!

“One evening as I was reading the gospels, my whole life flashed before me, but I was not afraid any more. I was not even ashamed of my sins. Jesus, in his mercy, had washed them away like dirty water flushed down the sink. I felt as free as a bird for the first time in my life. I was no longer chained to a life of sin. I became a new person, a child of God. My family were astounded at my transformation, and were overjoyed. I was baptized a Christian, and my mother soon followed my example.

“If Jesus could change my life around and make me a new person, he was surely worth believing in.

“Jesus changed my life and rid me of my addictions. He achieved what the clinic, the police, the judges, the doctors, my relatives and my friends could not do. Ever since receiving this gift of new life, I have been reading up on Christian literature. It was on Facebook that I got in touch with Fr. Hugh Duffy, and began to read his blogs which became a great source of inspiration and comfort for me. We kept in touch, he with me and I with him. One day, he asked me to write this story for his website.

“I am truly grateful to share this testimony to the new life of the gospel in my life, for like the wayward son in the parable of Luke’s gospel, chapter 15, I ‘was lost,’ and was ‘found.’ I ‘was dead,’ but now I am ‘alive,’ thank God.”

—Alex Diel