Author Archives: revsarah


About revsarah

Sarah is the minister at Belair Uniting Church. She is a Biblical Storyteller, plays clarinet, and is part of a social netball team, the drama queens. Sarah worked as a freelance editor and studied Creative Writing at Flinders University before candidating for ordained ministry. Sarah continues to write poetry and liturgy, and blogs at www.sarahtellsstories.blogspot.com

rainbows and wildernesses

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Last Sunday the stories of God’s promise to Noah and the sign of the rainbow, and Jesus’ baptism and trial in the wilderness shaped our gathered worship.

We began with ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ as children danced around the people (made possible by being in the hall because of the heat) with rainbow coloured gymnastics ribbons, surrounding us all with the rainbow promise.

When the children and I talked about the story, they told me the story of Noah and knew it well, and we remembered how we feel when we see rainbows in the sky – happy, excited – and thought about other signs and happenings that make us feel happy on ‘cloudy’ days, like a friend smiling, or sharing with us. The children were going to a house down the road to cook us pancakes for morning tea, as part of UnitingCare’s Pancake Day event. We wondered whether as we put the money in the dish to send to UnitingCare to help people poorer than us, we might think about that money sending a rainbow of care and love to those people. The kids drew rainbows on their signs, and ass we counted the money later, one person remarked – that’s a good rainbow!

The reflection focused on the other story, the story of Jesus in the wilderness, as I pondered how it feels to be in the wilderness, the sorts of wildernesses we find ourselves in at different times in our lives, the angels who stand beside us when we are struggling, though there may be nothing more others can do for us but stand beside us, and the rhythm of life that takes us from God’s affirming call on our lives, the struggle associated with the changes that brings about for us, and the moving into confident living out our call to follow God’s Way of Love.

During Lent, we sometimes feel as though we enter a wilderness, because this is a time of reflection on the ways we have turned from God, and a season of turning back, letting go of the things that come between us and  God, simplifying, remembering the poor for whom Jesus came among us.

May your lenten journey be a season of simplicity, of remembrance, of returning into fulness of life with God.