Exodus

Just Thinking…Very shortly, we will be sending out to our regular church attendees a survey to get feedback on issues relating to how our faith community may function going forward. The government has told us that in early December, Auckland will be moving to the new ‘Traffic Light’ protection framework for managing the covid-19 pandemic….

Just Thinking…We are living in troubling times and it is very easy to be swayed by many conflicting and vociferous voices. This week I have been pondering the response to the vaccines and how we as Christians accept the limitations placed on us and our so-called freedoms as we grow weary and want to be…

Just Thinking…I’ve been chatting with you for the last couple of weeks about ‘Two-Word Attitude Adjusters’ … on the assumption that most of us are probably feeling a little out of sorts every now and then in the current climate! I’ve talked about ‘AND YET’, and ‘THANK-YOU’. Here’s the next one for you: ‘NEXT TIME’….

Just Thinking… A couple of weeks ago, I introduced the ‘two-word attitude-adjuster’, ‘AND YET’. Here is another one for you … ‘THANK-YOU’. I come back time and again to the story of the ten lepers. ‘Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus travelled along the border between Samaria and Galilee.  As he was going into a village,…

Just Thinking…As a teenager, I lived by the motto “Sometimes you’ve gotta do, what you’ve gotta do”. It was my mantra for life, my firm belief, that my actions would only impact me and wouldn’t affect others. If the outcome benefited me, then it was worth doing. Yet, now as a Christian, I don’t think my teenage…

Just Thinking…Writer, Arthur Gordon, writes: Last summer in California, I met a man who had been a skydiver until, on his nineteenth jump, his parachute failed to open fully and his emergency chute wrapped itself around the partially collapsed main chute. He slammed into a dry lake bed at sixty miles an hour. Doctors thought…

Just Thinking…This week has been hard for people. I’m not sure why this week in particular has been difficult, and it may just be my own contact with a small subset of people, but it seems to be a ‘struggle-week’. It reminds me of a prayer that I have often found helpful: “Dear Lord So far…

Just Thinking…I heard a true story recently from the battle of El Alamein – one of the decisive battles of the Second World War. The battle was raged during the fiercely hot hours of the day when the heat was most intense on the sands of North Africa. When it seemed that the British had nearly…

Just Thinking…Kiwi Baptist and chaplain, Paul Askin, writes the following (quoted from The Baptist Magazine of New Zealand) A global pandemic! It’s a crisis for sure. No one knows how the future is going to unfold. Predictions vary from gloomy to catastrophic. Uncertainty is the only certainty. This is true for everyone, including leaders in Christian…

Just Thinking… Paul writes these words, ‘Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour, serving the Lord.’ I don’t know about you, but sometimes the amount of zeal in my ‘zeal-tank’ starts getting a bit low. Paul’s words, however, function like the low-fuel gauge on our dashboards, reminding us that fervour can leak…