Reflection of the Week – 14 July 2026

By Clive Conway
Becoming people of hopeful presence

Posted Jul 14, 2026 in Faith

Becoming people of hopeful presence

Genesis 28:10-19a | Romans 8:12-25 | Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

The daily news can leave us feeling frustrated, overwhelmed and powerless. Wars, natural disasters, displaced communities, the cost of living, and the usual array of speakers trying to whip us into a frenzy with half-truths. Many of us put on a positive face, but in our hearts might wonder, Where is God in all this?

The lectionary readings for Pentecost 8 suggest a different question. They ask, How might we be part of the healing that is already possible?

In Genesis 28, Jacob is on the run. He is far from home, uncertain of the future, sleeping rough in the wilderness. Yet it is there, in a place of vulnerability rather than certainty, that he encounters God and has the revelation that “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!” God’s presence is not confined to sacred buildings or comfortable circumstances. God is found even on the road, among refugees, in places of conflict, and in moments when life feels most unsettled. Of course, I believe this ‘in my head’, but how readily do I allow this truth to actually inhabit me and change the way I look at the world in every moment? And when I do, will I let this truth move me from the sort of ‘fuzzy’ global despondency I often feel, to recognising the places nearer at hand where I might actually have agency?

Romans 8 builds on this picture. Paul speaks of a creation that is “groaning” as it waits for renewal. Perhaps this is something that people were always aware of, but with the easy access to news and information we have today, we constantly hear the groaning of creation in droughts, floods, extinction, and environmental disruption, both locally and globally. Paul doesn’t deny this or even offer sunny optimism. Instead, he talks about hope. And although this passage has sometimes been read as saying, “don’t worry, God will sort it out”, I don’t believe that’s the key message here. Hope was never meant to be passive. Paul was writing to communities who were actively imagining and creating an alternative way of living in the present: “Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees?”.

In the Parable of the Weeds in Matthew 13, Jesus tells us that good and evil grow together in the same field. The servants want immediate action, but the farmer counsels them to be patient. In a polarised age, this is challenging wisdom. We are often encouraged to see the world as divided neatly into heroes and villains. Jesus suggests reality is more complicated. None of us sees the whole picture. The task of discipleship is not to uproot our ‘enemies’ but to cultivate conditions in which all life can flourish.

Taken together, these readings invite us to become people of hopeful presence. Like Jacob, we can learn to recognise God in unexpected places, and find that love, justice and compassion are woven into the deepest fabric of reality. Like Paul, we can acknowledge the world’s pain without surrendering to despair. Like Jesus, we can resist simplistic divisions and trust that God is still at work in imperfect fields.

The kingdom of God is not something we have to wait for, but something we can practise. In our every act of welcome and hospitality, every defence of human dignity, every effort to heal the earth, we plant a seed of the future we imagine. Then maybe the ‘groaning’ of creation will become not the sound of demise but of something new struggling to be born.

– Clive Conway

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