I don’t know about your Bible, but my personal Bible, which I’ve used since 1993, also serves as something of its own filing cabinet. Inserted among its thin pages are notes I’ve made, bits of paper on which I have scribbled things I can no longer read, and verses and other such material that I’ve once been given that would have held meaning for me at the time and so I have slipped away. Well, as I was preparing the sermon for today, one of those slips of paper fell out, and so I picked it up. It said this:

“Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful”.

It’s from Hebrews 11:23 and, having just re-read the gospel and the epistle, in which there is much to despair, I found, as indeed the note promised, a reason to hope.

The wider context to today’s message is that it’s also Refugee Sunday, in which we mark those who, often involuntarily, are weak and go to places in which they are not welcome. Overlaid onto that is the troubling rise of political parties around the world who reinforce an attitude that says “you’re not welcome” to the weak and dispossessed.