Minister urges MSPs to inspire people with 'hope' of better days ahead

An Inverclyde church minister has urged members of the Scottish Parliament to lead with a vision of hope that "inspires people to come together".

Rev Teri Peterson said they must encourage their constituents to put their hearts, minds and hands to the task of "creating the better future that we all say we want".

"Not wishful thinking, not empty promises made just to get or keep power," said the minister of St John's Parish Church in Gourock.

"Not negativity or blame about how those people — across the aisle or across the street or across the border or across the world — are keeping us from utopia.

"Hope grounded in the belief that things can change for the better, we're not stuck in the way things have ‘aye been'.

"Hope that transcends the obstacles we always think are in our way - party lines, accents, school backgrounds, whatever the barrier-du-jour is.

"Hope that leads us forward, not backward to some imagined perfect past."

Ms Peterson led Time for Reflection in the Scottish Parliament debating chamber this afternoon.

She told MSPs that Advent starts on Sunday - the time of waiting until the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.

It is a season of expectation and hope and Christians believe nothing is impossible with God.

Ms Peterson's address in full.

"Presiding Officer, members of the Scottish Parliament, thank you for the opportunity to address you today.

I've been thinking a lot lately, as many of us have, about change.

On the one hand, change is constant.

The pace of technology, for instance, often seems to outstrip our capacity to adapt.

On the other hand, many of us hate change and long for simpler bygone days of stability.

And on a third hand, I suppose, is the feeling that nothing really changes, that we are stuck with the way things are.

Nothing changes for our beleaguered high streets, nothing changes with embedded racist attitudes, nothing changes with our sense — correct or not — of corruption in our institutions.

Nothing changes, this is true, about the dreich west-of-Scotland weather, nothing changes about human nature.

That feeling of stuck-ness leads us straight to despair.

Nothing changes, we just have to put up with the way things are.

Or as people say to me all the time, ‘you've just got to get on with it'.

Keep doing the same old things the same old way but then be prepared for outrage when symptoms of despair are all around - loneliness, drugs deaths, mental health crises, deeper entrenchment of bigotry, even litter because why take pride in caring for our place if there's no point?

In the Christian calendar we are nearly at the season of Advent, it begins on Sunday.

Advent is a season of expectation, a season of hope and that's what I think our worldview needs these days more than ever – hope.

Not wishful thinking, not empty promises made just to get or keep power.

Not negativity or blame about how those people — across the aisle or across the street or across the border or across the world — are keeping us from utopia.

But real hope, grounded in facts and also in imagination of what's possible.

Hope grounded in the belief that things can change for the better, we're not stuck in the way things have ‘aye been'.

Hope that transcends the obstacles we always think are in our way - party lines, accents, school backgrounds, whatever the barrier-du-jour is.

Hope that leads us forward, not backward to some imagined perfect past.

That is what leaders of all types need to be doing in this season, casting a vision of hope that inspires us to come together, inspires us to put our hearts and minds and hands to the task of creating the better future that we all say we want but in the next breath will lament as impossible.

It's only impossible if we give up on it.

So please, in this season and beyond, let's lead with hope.

Thank you."