Where Do We Go From Here

76 Reflect Sitting at the back of the classroom is not a new experience to me. That’s where you’re most likely to get away with things, as every school-kid knows. It’s also the safest place if you’re not sure quite what’s going on. Sitting at the back of a classroom at Wontulp-Bi-Buya Colleg e 4 in Cairns was, for me, more of the latter than the former. At Wontulp, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people study the sacred texts of both the Bible and the Dreaming, talking about where God has been in their history, is now - and what God is calling us to in the future. I was both silenced and captivated as I watched people wrestle with what it means to be a follower of Christ and a traditional owner of the story and land we call Australia. I, quite rightly, had nothing to contribute but my attention. This was deep and serious mystery. The Book of Acts is the story of two people groups, Jews and Gentiles (and in fact, both of these had many sub-groups), who, when brought into contact with the strangeness and joy of the Gospel story, were challenged to bring what they had known of God together with what was being revealed to them. Nothing about that process could have been easy or straightforward. Like all new births it was a mixture of the sharpest pain and the most profound happiness. Acts is so often preached and taught as ‘triumph’ and yet our lived experiences are often of struggle and misunderstanding (and such are also lurking beneath the surface of Acts everywhere for the attentive reader). What was revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus demanded the