Reflection by Revd Dr Tessa Henry-Robinson, Moderator of the Free Churches Group

As autumn settles in, we are reminded that seasons preach truthfully. The falling leaves tell us that time is not infinite. They speak of beauty and decay, of endings that prepare the ground for beginnings. And if we are attentive, the world around us becomes liturgy: Creation groaning, longing, straining toward redemption.

Paul’s words in Romans 8 are not polite. He does not say creation “sighs” or “waits patiently.” He says it groans. Groaning is the sound of labour, the noise of a world aching to be reborn. And that groaning is not passive—it presses in, demanding that God’s future be lived now, not later.

This is what hope truly is. It is neither a sentimental comfort nor a wish we whisper privately. Hope is defiance. It is the bold refusal to surrender to despair. It names injustice as temporary. It looks death in the face and proclaims resurrection anyway.

In my first months as Moderator of the Free Churches Group, I have seen glimpses of this hope alive in our churches. I have worshipped with communities who celebrate milestones with uncontainable joy, who carry one another through suffering, who stand firm in the face of hardship. This is not a polite religious witness, but a necessary alternative to the despair and division of our age.

And yet, such hope demands something from us. It demands we live differently: unselfishly, sacrificially, relentlessly. It calls us to shape communities where love is more than rhetoric, where mercy disarms cruelty, where generosity dismantles scarcity, where justice unseats privilege. It compels us to hear Creation’s groaning — but not just to hear but to listen, so that it is not just background noise but holy truth—and to respond with reverence, urgency, and action.

To live this way requires rejecting the politics of fear, resisting the culture of division, standing with the excluded, and daring to share resources until no one is left behind. It means letting our lives become signs of God’s reign, even when it is inconvenient, misunderstood, or opposed. This is costly.

And yet this costly call is laced with joy. For in giving ourselves away, we discover the abundant life Christ promised, not intent on being consumers and relentless seekers of comfort, but intentional participants in redemption.

This is what our churches can offer the world — a lifelong witness that God’s future is pressing into the present, and that another way is not only possible—it is already breaking in.

As we move into this season, may our lives and our churches become the sound of Creation’s groans transformed into a song of justice, compassion, and peace. May we live as people of unyielding hope, daring faith, and uncompromising love.

That is our calling. That is our joy.

Blessed be God forever!