Bishop

Who am I? What is my identity? These are basic questions we all grapple with. But our lives are hidden with Christ in God – a comfort we can rely on always.

‘Imagine an endlessly renewable source of pure life, eternal life even. Life that resides not in a deep well somewhere, but in the depths of your own being.”

Grief can make God hard to see. Easter’s comfort is that in the lonely, helpless, lifeless, brutalised figure of Jesus dying on Good Friday, God meets us in the ‘basement’ of life.

This Christmas we may be back in our churches, but it is not quite the same as it was. I pray that at Christmas, Christ will come to his church and his whole world, weary and dislocated and threatened and unsure of the pathway forward, and his presence will comfort and strengthen us.

We live with an expectation that things get fixed. We are used to having things repaired, put back together, improved, or these days mostly replaced.

Two weekends ago some of us here today walked through the Barossa Valley as part of Walk My Way – 670 Christians walking 26km together in faith and in love for God and for the vulnerable children of the world. Persevering in the hope of reaching our destination and goal together, leaving no one behi

If we have learnt anything from the past year it is how fragile our lives on earth really are. We have also learnt much about our humanity, both good and bad. If we are honest that includes ourselves.

What are you hoping for this year? ‘Hope’ is the theme of our upcoming Synodical Convention in May, carried over from last year’s planned event which could not take place face-to-face due to the pandemic.

Distancing and being kept apart from people we know and love has been hard during 2020. We have learnt to value each other’s presence anew through being kept apart, unable to be close and present with and for each other for a time.

We have learnt to value the ‘presence’ of other people in an unexpected way this year. We have learnt to value each other’s presence by not being able to be present with each other for a time in many workplaces, at significant family gatherings and in our church buildings.