The Church
Our First Nations people speak of Sacred Sites and Sacred Knowledge, of Country, of Family and Tribe.
What familiar notions these are, especially to an Anglo-Celtic Christian inheritance
that is common to most Australian Anglicans. Let us relax and be proud of what that inheritance has,
and can, teach us. To love the places that have been prayed in, where the Body of Christ,
the servants of God, meet to pray, to experience the presence of God in Word and Sacrament,
to grow in love and mercy. We are Body of Christ, brothers and sisters, lovers of God’s created world.
We are Church. It is as the old hymn begins We love the place, O God,
wherein thine honour dwells and ends Lord Jesus, give us grace
on earth to love thee more, in heaven to see thy face, and with thy saints adore.
Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers,
to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son.
Acts 20: 28
Mothers’ Union in Leicester UK offers us a meditation on relationships which are, when in Christ,
a microcosm of what our church life can be. The influence that mothers, grandmothers and sisters
have on their families often goes unnoticed and yet it is of enormous value.
May families around the world see more clearly how they
benefit from the love of these women, given so freely.