Thank you for choosing to study with ABM again. Each year, thousands of individuals in hundreds of parishes order our Lenten Studies and sit down to consider their faith and God’s story. By joining this learning community, we hope that you feel very much a part of God’s mission in Australia and the wider world. Our studies are designed to encourage you towards a deeper understanding of what God is doing and how God is at work in the world. Mission is always dynamic, as God meets the new day and the new reality. Throughout history, we have been challenged by the radical nature of God’s love being expressed in new contexts and through new voices. We must always be alert to the living voice of the Gospel. Once, mission – as understood from a Western, imperial perspective – meant taking ‘our’ voice and our culture and our belief system and imposing it on ‘others’. The result of this approach was often destructive. Cultures and ideas and understanding that could have led us closer to a contextual and holistic understanding of where God was at work in a particular place were often demeaned, ignored or suppressed. We have needed to – and still need to – repent for the mistakes made and the damage inflicted. This is particularly true in Australia, where we have, for far too long, marginalised the voice and spiritual understanding of First Nations people. ‘God’s own country’ is an expression often used in awe, when we stand before a place we see as beautiful and wish to name as sacred. The land we live in has always been ‘God’s own country’, and it was honoured as sacred by the people who lived here for over 65,000 years before the first European boats arrived and the frontier wars were fought. In this book, we seek to listen to and honour the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elders and leaders. We are invited to hear from people who are Introduction 4
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