We who follow Christ are called to roll up our sleeves and step into a suffering world with good news for the poor, healing for the sick, and freedom for the oppressed.
We are called for such a time as this.
Are we ready?
I’ve just spent two days with the Christian Conference of Asia, sitting with church leaders who between them carry the hopes of fifty million Christians across this region. I asked them what keeps them awake at night. The answer I heard most was forced migration and statelessness.
Desperate people crossing borders in search of safety and a livelihood because of climate change, poverty and conflict.
Young people leaving because there is no work. Families abandoning traditional land as harvests fail. The same forces, again and again, falling hardest on those least able to absorb them.
And yet what I heard, again and again, were stories of people of faith stepping into the breach to love their neighbours, no matter where they came from.
In Indonesia, our church partners in Nusa Timur Tenggara have built a “House of Hope” for survivors of trafficking.
In the Philippines, churches of every denomination shelter and defend migrant workers far from home. Rev Charissa Suli, President of the Uniting Church in Australia, spoke of communities losing their ancestral land to rising seas, reminding us that we cannot separate people’s suffering from the forces driving it: climate change, inequality and conflict.
In Tuvalu, our own Rev Apwee Ting saw it again recently, where rising seas aren’t a future risk but a present reality. The new partnership agreement between the Uniting Church in Australia and the Congregational Christian Church of Tuvalu is our answer to exactly this: standing with church partners so people can live, work and sustain their families in the place they call home.
It’s the same work our partners in places like Sumba are doing right now, helping families hold their ground before hardship forces them to leave.
Thank you to the many people who donated to support that vital work in Sumba and beyond.