Each Sunday we reflect on words in our Bible that have been handed down to us by many generations of faithful people for over two thousand years. We stop and reflect on those words and their wisdom echoes down through the ages connecting with us in 21st century Australia. Our life situations are very different to those of Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, and Rebecca. Our experiences as followers of Jesus are very different culturally to those of the Apostle Paul. But our humanity connects us not only to each one of these past heroes, but also to each other. We are fellow travellers on the journey of human life and we are faced with the same realities of life and death, of hope and despair as have all people at all times in human history. Like them, we can lose sight of our own shortcomings and use others for our own gratification. But like them also, we can turn in repentance to the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ who will always offer us forgiveness and open up to us the possibility of new beginnings.

We believe in a God who always surprises us, who creates life from death

Who brings good out of evil, who leads us from despair to hope.

We believe in a God who is faithful to us, who shows mercy when we run away.

Who shows patience when we deny the truth, who gives reconciling love when we betray.

We believe in a God who lived and died as one of us To take the fear out of living and dying, to open our eyes to death, within us and around us,

And open our hearts to a new way of living.

We believe in a God who forgives us, who sets us free from past grief and failure And calls us forth into a new day.

Dorothy McRae-McMahon, Echoes of our Journey (1993)