Transformation across broken relationships

Kia ora whānau,

As we near the end of ordinary time, this week Manu reflected on the broken relationships that God intends to reconcile. Reconciliation is at the heart of God’s good news.

Bryant Myers of World Vision has helpfully produced diagrams of the broken relationships we have been talking about, and the corresponding promise of transformation.

The solutions are not quick-fix interventions. Relationships take time. They take listening. They take humility. Reconciliation means being committed to dialogue and to being on a journey together.

What relationship do you need to attend to this week? Do you need to have some time with God? Do you need space to understand yourself better? Is there a person or community you are avoiding? Is family breakfast a helpful habit here? Or maybe you are being invited to listen to the land, which “evanglises for God”, even as it cries out for a better tomorrow?

Even where we see the pain of our disconnection everywhere, and the power of division seemingly in charge, we can have hope that Jesus is surely coming to reign. Are we ready? Sri Lankan Vinoth Ramachandra reminds us that we are the “community of those who have tasted the powers of the coming age and who live as signs of that upside-down Kingdom: the place where social and economic barriers are being broken down in a demonstration of the reconciling power of the Gospel”. This is our story.