It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,… it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair… (Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

Charles Dickens' description of the atmosphere in London and Paris in 1775 has a grim applicability to London in 2005. The sense of hope and expectation felt by so many following the award of the 2012 Olympics to London on 6th July was followed, fewer than 24 hours later, by a sickening anxiety and sense of despair. Four bombs, placed with cruel calculation on one of the busiest public transport networks in the world, left some fifty people dead, over seven hundred injured and many thousands shocked and bewildered. Many in this community had relatives and friends who were caught up in the dreadful events of 7th July and the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, surely spoke for all of us when he asserted that "right now, we are all Londoners".

The leaders of religious communities have an immensely difficult task in such situations, especially when there is a widely-held belief that those responsible have a so-called religious motivation for their actions. So it was encouraging and inspiring to see and hear, just three days after the bombings, five religious leaders representing the Christian, Jewish and Muslim communities each reading, in turn, from a statement on which they had all agreed. Amongst other things, the statement urged a continuation of efforts "to build a Britain in which different communities - including faith communities - can flourish side by side".

We cannot, and we should not, seek to forget the horror of the London bombs. Indeed it is precisely by not forgetting that all people of faith can be strengthened to continue the task of promoting what the Archbishop of Canterbury has called "our shared understanding of the life that God calls us to".