Dear friends,
A Happy New Year to all.
“As Christians we watch the years pass not with nostalgia or sentimentality but with the joy of those moving forward to an encounter with true life” (Oscar Romero). May we be able to fill the year ahead with peace and love.
I pray for peace in our world, especially in the Holy Land, and wish a ceasefire including the release of the hostages.
I hope that you had a blessed Christmas and feel refreshed as we begin this new year. I pray for you and your community as you seek to work humbly for God in whatever way you are called to serve.
As you do so I would like to encourage you to consider how the bible will feature in your thoughts during this year. It may seem strange for a bishop to be saying this to a Christian community.
Yet as I have spoken before this is a longstanding concern of mine. That Christians have lost the knowledge of God’s great story as written in the sixty-six books that make up our bible. We must reclaim that story and see it as our story. And we must be confident in telling it. Young and old, lay and clergy, we must be confident in the story and be able to show how our story fits into God’s great story.
I don’t want this to be a fad or an initiative. I want us to consciously weave our understanding of the bible and biblical study into all that we do over the next and future years.
We have the rule of life where we are encouraged to pray, read and learn and I would ask you think about how you use this discipline to reengage with your bible, to maybe delve into places that you haven’t visited for a while. You will find great joy in the exploration. Our rule of life challenges us to continue to place scripture at the heart of what we are doing.
As will the rhythm of our clergy study and retreat days. I want to model what you can also do in your settings and places where you gather and worship. I am using the opportunities from our calendar to be able to think around the bible. I want to encourage you to do the same in your setting.
Some of you may choose to read the whole Bible in this year. Some may want to read the books in the Bible you are not familiar with. Some may want to re-read the familiar parts of the Bible with fresh eyes and ears. You may want to look at the provision you have in your congregation for studying the Bible. ‘Disciple’ means ‘student.’ We are all called to be learners as disciples of Christ.
Let’s make 2024 a year where we consciously read, engage with, and study the Bible in every possible context, making a commitment to learn our own story in Christ and to share it confidently.
+John
Rt Revd Dr John Perumbalath, Bishop of Liverpool