Reflection - Reconciliation under God

By Rev Aunty Roberta Stanley - Chairperson of the UAICC Regional Council Qld

God’s love is wider than our differences, larger than our loneliness and stronger than our sorrows.
At times we may doubt that we are able to overcome hostilities we feel towards others or have felt towards us, yet I would like to offer that through surrender and obedience to God’s great and reconciling love, we are able to see more clearly the beautiful pictures of our Lord’s gift of a wonderous creation.

Romans 5: 1-5 calls us to peace and hope through faith, grace and perseverance. “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

The work of reconciliation under God is not simple, it requires peoples who may feel suffering through dispute to look at each other as we would look to reconciling with God. To see the joy in working to live amongst each other in peace, in a creation made for us. Peace given from God, with God and in God.

Reconciliation between First and Second Peoples must begin with reconciling ourselves in truth and humility with our Lord. Then we can do the work of peacemakers and justice seekers in understanding what we may need to know better to be able to act responsibly and respectfully.
My hope for the coming season of faith in our Uniting Church, is that we look towards each other as peoples of God who wish to be supported to live freely in enjoying the giving of spiritual care for each other through wonder and worship.

Please see Rev Aunty Roberta’s first letter to the life of the church in Queensland as Chair of the Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress - Queensland Regional Council.