Be a Voice for Generations
This Friday, 26th May, is National Sorry Day. It is a day in our national calendar set aside to remember and acknowledge the mistreatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were forcibly removed from their families and communities as a part of a government initiative focussed on complete indigenous assimilation.
Thousands of children were taken and placed in institutions, fostered out or adopted by non-indigenous families and those children are known today as ‘The Stolen Generations'. While many of those involved were well meaning and thought they were doing the best thing for indigenous children at the time, the devastating impact of those government policies and practices is now well documented. The majority of those children who were taken and placed outside their family and community experienced various forms of trauma and dissociation.
In 1997, the Bringing them Home Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their families was tabled in Parliament and National Sorry Day was born. Among its many recommendations was one that the Prime Minister apologise to the Stolen Generations and in 2008, the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a formal apology on behalf of the Australian federal government.
National Sorry Day is immediately followed by Reconciliation Week, providing a focus for us to move on from lament to creating pathways and opportunities for a better Australia where we can work together for the good of all people.
Each year National Sorry Day has a theme and this year it is “Be a Voice for Generations”. We are being encouraged to use our words and our actions to create a better, more just and equitable Australia for all.
There are many ways we can do this, but as my friend Michael Duckett, the Pastor of Macarthur Indigenous Church, would say, the most important words we can speak and the most important actions we can take, are gospel words and actions for the most important reconciliation Australians need is between us and God.
So much of this correlates beautifully with things we are doing at church at the moment.
We are in the middle of our shared series in Exodus where we are encouraging people young and old to talk together and encourage each other with what we are learning together week by week. Use the cards you have to stimulate conversation and prayer. How are you being a voice for generations in your interaction with each other at church, at home, among young and old?
We are also pressing into ShareLife Go this week, encouraging each other to speak the words of life and reconciliation to those around us so they might hear of the good news of Jesus and be saved. I am so thankful for Elliot’s careful, gracious persistent encouragement of us to keep growing in this. How are you being a voice for generations around you and following you who don’t yet know Jesus?
No doubt, as National Sorry Day and Reconciliation Week are upon us you will have opportunities at school, at university, at work, at home, at the shops, anywhere really, to chat with friends and others, to think about the progress of our country and all that is happening at this time - particularly constitutionally - but as you do, remember that your voice will be most powerful when it carries the words of Jesus, inviting people to come to him to find life, hope, identity and a future guaranteed by his life.
So this week, be a voice for generations - for a better Australia but more importantly for the eternity of the people around you. Amen.
