Good news for all

One of my favourite authors has a story-telling technique that absolutely hooks me into a novel. Beginning with an intriguing or dramatic scene at the start of the book, she then tells the story from many months earlier, filling in the details and working out a surprising route towards what you already know will happen.

The story of the Bible works in a similar way. From the very start, God tells his people what he intends to happen, although there are many twists and turns along the way. When God spoke to Abraham, there was not yet a nation of God’s people; it was the promise of descendants that childless Abraham first had to believe. The plan was never for one small group alone to benefit from God’s blessing but that people of all nations and ethnicities should be equally embraced and included within the community of God’s kingdom.

This is the ‘gospel’ – the good news – that God set out from the start, and which we now have a share in. But since there is not yet racial justice in the church or in the world, we need to play our part in narrating and shaping this chapter of God’s story.

God of all nations, thank you that your good news is a gospel of reconciliation and restored relationship between people, and between us and you. Help me to remember the importance of racial justice, to reflect on the goodness of human diversity, and respond by playing my part to end the sin of racism in my society. Amen.