{"id":70698,"date":"2015-12-22T12:52:00","date_gmt":"2015-12-22T12:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/glasgow-remembers-bishop-of-glasgow-and-galloway-speaks-at-anniversary-service-for-bin-lorry-tragedy\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T10:49:38","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T10:49:38","slug":"glasgow-remembers-bishop-of-glasgow-and-galloway-speaks-at-anniversary-service-for-bin-lorry-tragedy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/glasgow-remembers-bishop-of-glasgow-and-galloway-speaks-at-anniversary-service-for-bin-lorry-tragedy\/","title":{"rendered":"Glasgow Remembers \u2013 Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway speaks at Anniversary Service for Bin Lorry Tragedy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Rt Rev Dr Gregor Duncan, Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway took part in a service to mark the anniversary of the bin lorry tragedy in Glasgow\u2019s city centre last December.\u00a0 The service was organised by Glasgow Churches Together. \u00a0Bishop Gregor preached the sermon. In the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-35151194\">BBC<\/a>\u00a0live coverage of the service, it was reported that &#8216;<em>Bishop says events on Queen Street a year ago were an accident waiting to happen\u00a0<\/em><em>and said it was &#8220;pointless and\u00a0meaningless &#8211;\u00a0a consequence of human folly and irresponsibility&#8221;.&#8217;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Bishop Gregor also said\u00a0\u201cChristians believe that the God who became flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, in Jesus Christ, the God of Christmastide, continues in our midst.\u00a0 God is to be found in the people who ran to help in George Square, who ran towards the mayhem. God is to be found in the efforts of the people who staff our emergency services. God is to be found in every act of compassion and of solidarity and of love, in every tear that is shed, in every moment of heart-rending grief, in the long winter of numbness and of pain and of loss.\u00a0 God is there, whether we can find it in us to find God there or not, or to believe that God is there or not.\u00a0 God is there to take our anger, our disbelief, our forsakenness, our outrage that the world is like this, if that is all we can do. And often it is all we can do, as the psalmists often show us: <em>Why stand so far off, O Lord<\/em>&#8230; God is there in our efforts to reduce the chances of such a thing ever happening again in our city. And God will be there when we fail and other, as yet unforeseen, accidents happen. God is there. God is here. God is <em>God with us<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGod is <em>God with us<\/em>. Many people of faith, and not only Christians, experience this to be true, even, maybe even especially, in the darkest times of life.\u00a0 We hope and pray that this service, in a loving if inevitably small way, and in the midst of suffering and heartbreak, may help to keep that perspective alive and visible, whilst fully realising that for those whose lives were torn apart in our city centre a year ago the grief and the loss and the questioning\u00a0 will continue.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The full sermon preached by Bishop Gregor at the service can be read <a href=\"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-content\/uploads\/archived-docs\/Bin-Lorry-Remembrance-Service-Bishop-Gregor-Duncan.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>, and a reflection\u00a0by\u00a0Bishop Gregor on the tragedy a year on in The Herald newspaper can be read\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.heraldscotland.com\/opinion\/14160144.Agenda__God_is_there_when_people_show_love__kindness__care_and_self_sacrifice_at_times_of_disaster\/\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Rt Rev Dr Gregor Duncan, Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway took part in a service to mark the anniversary of the bin lorry tragedy in Glasgow\u2019s city centre last December.\u00a0 The service was organised by Glasgow Churches Together. \u00a0Bishop Gregor preached the sermon. In the BBC\u00a0live coverage of the service, it was reported that [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14371,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70698"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73313,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70698\/revisions\/73313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hillside.work\/sec\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}