Greetings to the Koonung Heights Community

I have been reading about you recently. Graham Ray was kind enough to pass onto me some old copies of Koonung Corner with autobiographical pieces from several members of the congregation. And a piece about Jim’s Well’s parents being involved in the production of the Yirrkaka bark petition, and I have nearly finished Jim Begg’s autobiography, “Proud to be a Wharfie”. I do find people’s stories interesting – well the first time or two. Not so much the fifteenth or fiftieth to be honest! There does not even need to be any earthshattering miraculous elements. Just the impact of choices taken, decisions made in the spur of the moment, a commitment to endure and be faithful – all these elements are part of what makes us different.

We don’t do all that much sharing of our stories in church anymore, so I am glad to see these “Getting to Know You” pieces. We used to do it a bit in my younger days at Ashburton Methodist/Uniting when we ran Youth Services. We would try to include what we called a “testimony” – usually someone sharing how they had come to faith. There were elements of this that are a bit worrying in hindsight – the pressure to tell a good story sometimes had fresh faced 18 year olds embellishing stories to make it sound like they had hit the absolute pits and been dragged up and restored to a blemish free life of Christian service. But they were encouraging to many of those attending and we would do well to find ways of sharing our stories of faith.

Reading the Bible is one way the Church shares its story of the faithful God. As I said recently our primary purpose in reading the Bible is not to find out what God did in the dim dark past, but more to discover what sorts of things God may want to be doing today through us. We read the Bible and tell our stories to reorient ourselves, strengthen our sense of who we are, and to be reassured once again that this God who was faithful to previous generations will also remain faithful in our generation.

All the best, Ray