Weekly reflections

Dear Friends Two months ago, we were visited by members of The Community of the Transfiguration, a Baptist monastic community situated in Teesdale, Victoria, and we had the opportunity over five days to experience different forms of contemplative prayer. As you know, one of our church goals is exploring what it means to follow Jesus today, and this year we have been focusing on prayer, along with other spiritual disciplines which have can invigorate our lives as individuals and as Read more…

Dear Friends Two weeks ago, I had the wonderful experience of joining the Micah Women Leaders Delegation to Canberra. I was one of 40 women church leaders, representing over 35 churches and organisations, who had 45 meetings with politicians on our day in Parliament. We were there to advocate for women and children in the Pacific where nearly 87 percent of children, and one in four adolescent girls across eight countries, experience physical violence regularly, while one in 10 experience Read more…

Dear Friends Some weeks ago I wrote in the Pastoral Note (1 Sept) about the man sleeping in the patio near the men’s toilets; how we assisted him, looked after his cat and how he was so grateful that he gave us $20 for the Centre and resolved to return and confront the problem at home.  Well he returned dismayed and broken. After some considerable networking I am so pleased to report that we have been able to find accommodation Read more…

Dear Friends Over the next three Sundays (8th, 15th and 22nd September) and – after the school holidays – on the 20th October, we will be working through a sermon series produced by Baptist World Aid called The End of Greed: Consuming as if God, People and the Planet Matter. Increasingly we hear voices in our society saying that our over-consumption of the planet’s resources, our callous attitude to living things, our neglect and exploitation of the poor and our Read more…

Dear Friends I mentioned at the church meeting that last week we had a guy sleeping on the patio near the men’s toilets.  We were able to talk with him, assist him, and give him rest.  In fact, more than that, he had a cat with him, and when he woke he asked if we could babysit his cat while he went to get his pension in Civic.  We did and he returned most grateful for our care of him Read more…

Dear Friends “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles…” Last Sunday’s Bible reading followed me this week, all the way to New Zealand, to Christchurch, where the inner-city pastor’s conference was held, for there in the foyer of the rebuilt Oxford Terrace Baptist Church, above the niche where the baptismal sits, is that verse in English and in Maori (“Na, i Read more…

Dear Friends Sometime around my sixteenth birthday I became very worried about what is meant by 1 Thessalonians 5:17. “Pray without ceasing.” (By the way, if you thought “Jesus wept.”, John 11:35, was the shortest verse in the Bible, it has contenders -besides being longer in the original languages! 1 Thessalonians 5:17 is in the running, as you can see, but 16 is shorter still: “Rejoice always…”) But, coming back to my sixteen year old self, I can remember, because Read more…

Dear Friends We spent our holidays with our daughter and her partner in the top-end: first in Darwin, then Katherine where our daughter works as a nurse specialist in an Aboriginal medical clinic called Wurli Wurlinjang, and then camping in and around the district including Kakadu. It is haunting country, lush and harsh. Lil, our daughter, reminded us that during the wet season being outside can be overwhelming, if not because of the heat, but also because the mosquitoes are Read more…

Dear Friends  In my experience, nothing stirs the Sunday lunch conversation, among the women anyway, like a sermon on Mary and Martha! “Belinda,” I heard last week, “It doesn’t matter what people say, someone has to be Martha and do the work!” Or, “I still don’t get that story. It just isn’t fair! Why should Mary get to sit and contemplate while Martha does everything!” This sentiment is expressed in Professor of New Testament, William Loader’s commentary, He writes, “It’s Read more…