(Jess writes) On Sunday we were thinking again about God's good news for the world. One important part of God’s good news is about justice. Justice isn’t about us being told off for the times we get things wrong. Justice is about things being put right.

Helen gave a great example of this in her talk. She told the story of a doctor in a town dealing with lots of children getting seriously ill. At first it seemed like an unfortunate set of circumstances and so she treated the symptoms of the children. Eventually the doctor went to look for the reason why the children were getting sick and it was revealed that the water from the river, that was supplying the drinking water for children, was being polluted by a factory further up the river. To stop the children being ill the doctor needed to stop the factory polluting the drinking water. Helen told us that our acts of kindness in the world are like the doctor treating the symptoms of the children. This is a good and important thing to do but we also need to seek justice. Justice is about tackling the root cause of the problem. God’s good news is about dealing with the causes of the problems in our world, not just dealing with the effects of the problems in the world.

As part of our service we spent time praying for justice. We prayed for our world leaders by making crowns and writing their names on them. We prayed for countries where people are trapped in modern slavery by creating paper chains and tearing them as we prayed. We built crosswords with letter tiles (or wrote them on paper) with words of life and hope for our world. We lit candles as we prayed for Christians around the world as we seek to bring God’s justice in the world. We took a virtual prayer walk around our community using apps, maps or our imagination. We held money (or other symbols in our hands) as we asked for forgiveness for the times that we have contributed to injustice in the world and asked for God’s help to live differently.
Here are a few of the pictures of our prayers. Please do join us next week when we will be continuing to think about God’s good news for the world.
Here are a few of the pictures of our prayers. Please do join us next week when we will be continuing to think about God’s good news for the world.