Bishop Tor B’s New Year Message: “All shall be Amen & Alleluia”

Thank you all for the fellowship we have experienced in the strange and challenging year we have behind us. Let us meet the new supposedly equally strange and challenging year ahead of us with the hope and expectations founded in the always renewing presence of God’s Grace in Jesus Christ.

With my South-African background (my mother was born in Eshowe, just north of Durban by missionary parents who themselves went to Zulu-land in 1880) I have always felt close to archbishop Desmond Tutu, meeting him on several occasions. On a visit with the “Youth Choir” of the Cathedral in Bodø in 2004, I received a Tutu-puppet from some children playing in the township Khayelitsha. The puppet has followed me since – and is now blessing me from behind in my makeshift office.

Tutu-puppet from Khayelitsha, South Africa. Photo: Tor B Jørgensen

In his African Prayer Book he ends the introduction with a quote from St Augustine, and let this be my greeting to you all for this new year – and with a picture of the blessing and blessed archbishop always creating hope and joy.

All shall be Amen and Alleluia.

We shall rest and we shall see,

We shall see and we shall know,

We shall know and we shall love,

We shall love and we shall praise.

Behold our end which is no end.

Yours in Christ

+Tor B Jørgensen