‘A willingness to stick with things’

We can always find more reasons to give up on something than to keep going … and finding them takes no faith or intelligence! 

These few words serve as a personal reminder as to the importance of sticking with things that matter. Yet sticking with something is in some ways counter cultural. 

Use by dates and best before dates rule our decisions about products, at times for good reasons! New versions or updates or latest models serve as statements about the things of the past. Being described as ‘old school’ or being ‘rooted in the past’ are ways that seem to diminish the narrative that has brought us to this moment.  

The fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23 are a list of abiding and deep gifts. They are things to seek, and Paul closes the list with the sentence; ‘There is no law about such things as these’!  

The Message version takes the word ’faithfulness’ from the list of the fruits of the Spirit and replaces it with the phrase ‘a willingness to stick with things’. It is a very helpful way to think about faithfulness. 

Over the course of the next two weeks as we focus on the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and as we enter the week for National Reconciliation we continue our annual journey of hope and prayer. Sometimes outcomes are hard to see. 

Our Christian witness is not helped by division, and is all the more complex when we have so much in common. 

Our prayer is for a growth in our unity as Christian communities and, as we pray, we anticipate a renewed connected witness to the God who unifies us. 

We continue to pray for renewed relationships with Australia’s First Peoples and non-indigenous Australians. At the same time we seem to be moving into a more polarised narrative about how the voices of Australia’s Indigenous peoples can be listened to. 

It is really important that we do not give up. 

As we pray again this year we do so with a deep hope in our hearts and with a ‘willingness to stick with things’. We can see what unity can bring and we long for a healing in Australia’s relationships with our First Peoples. 

We anticipate something much better than the present and together we can affirm that we will stick with our prayer for unity and our anticipation of a new future for all Australians.

Rev John Gilmore 

NCCA President