The theme for this year’s Synod meeting is taken from Isaiah 43:19 that reads:
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.
The message to the Israelite exiles living in Babylon was not to give up hope, for God still loved them and had not abandoned them. As is so often the case in the prophetic Scriptures, the task of the prophet was to change the conversation and use poetic imagination to paint a different story, one of new hope and new life for the nation.
What are the stories that we tell each other? Do we share our worries about the future of our congregation or even of the Uniting Church? Or do we look through the eyes of faith and imagine a vigorous and flourishing congregation that is a signpost to the world of an alternative way to live? God is the one who brings life, even in the wilderness, like a desert that blooms after rain.