This Wednesday is a new season. It's called Lent and for near enough to 2000 years Christians have used it as a time of prayerful self examination as the anniversary of Jesus death and resurrection draws near. Fasting with Prayer has always been a powerful feature of this season.

This morning I called the Parish to Pray and Fast - maybe just one meal - this Wednesday, and at times through Lent. You are invited too. However please don't read that as a heavy. No one's going to be checking up on you, and you may not be able to anyway.

I believe we need to pray for a hunger for God to grow and develop 1stly in our selves, 2ndly in the church, and 3rdly in Marlborough. This Wednesday (Ash Wednesday) will finish in the  evening in Nativity Church at 7.30pm, with the short half hour service of the Imposition of Ashes.

Bring along your palm crosses from previous years if you have them still. And if you want to hear (or re-hear) my sermon on fasting it will hopefully be up on our website by 4pm Monday.

May God bless you this Lent season.

What a movie! According to the credits (and the book the movie is based on), just by going you make a difference. Proceeds help support children in India who have become lost like Saroo did at age 5. It made me realise afresh how much we have, and how much we take it all for granted. I think again that if we are Christians in New Zealand, we should be among the most grateful people on this planet.

Lion is the 2nd powerful movie Libby and I have seen in about as many weeks. We don't go to movies THAT much, but this and Hidden Figures, are two crackers. Lion is the true story of a young Indian boy, based on his book A Long Way Home. Through the poverty his family lived in, he fell asleep on a train and ended up on the other side of India. Being illiterate as well as only 5 years old, he was left to fend for himself on the streets. After a series of dangerous encounters he found shelter in an orphanage. Adopted by an Australian family he never forgot his origins and in his early 20's he researched his way back to his family.

The reunion reminded me of the joy of the return of the prodigal son, though the causes for that boys separation from family were very different.

Weather's looking very good for Convergence - that's the Kaiteriteri camp for the Nelson Diocese this weekend. Libby, Sue Howarth and Jonathan Wasley are with a whole bunch of our Nativity people - especially our young families.  
So Libby sent these photos early afternoon today (Saturday). She also said the main speaker, Bishop Justin Duckworth from Wellington led a very significant morning. I guess we'll find out what that means! 

So plan to be there next year!

Another really nice time of worship today at both 8 and 10am. A new song "Sovereign" by Chris Tomlin really caught on. Sue Howarth took us to the core of "our story" with God at Nativity, in "His-story" as she preached. (You can hear it on our website) 
And next week the Children and youth ministries get into full swing as we commission them for the year. And the 7pm service starts up then too.
But as Jo Danks (who took those photos this morning said:
"Sometimes it is just in the 'ordinary' that we see how blessed we really are. Today was one of those 'ordinary' Sundays. The sun was shining, people were smiling and in this beautiful country of ours, we have freedom to openly share worship and fellowship."
She's right. And again today people stayed on for a long time, chatting and playing, inside and out. Yeah. Nice.

On Friday evening Libby and I went to the movie Hidden Figures. It was quite inspirational. I clapped at the end. Although it was a great story it was also certainly based on true facts, and was very real for the times. I was only wee, and living here in New Zealand when those events happened, but I remember them and the attitudes of the times.

I was struck with how appropriate it was for Waitangi Weekend to see this movie, set in America. Libby and I have written on the frontpage of this week's Pew News (see Nativity website) more about  the Treaty of Waitangi, and it's implications for us.
But the movie had more for me than a story about positive movement for women and racial attitudes. Al Harrison the boss of the space programme was having huge pressure on him to get a man into space. I strongly suspect that it was the pressure as much as any goodwill he had, that caused him to notice Katherine, the human computer, and thus to break down the barriers to her role as a "coloured woman".
None of us like it when we are under the hammer. Often it's the hard times we face that will let us see - or at least respond to - the hand of the living God and the places He wants to take us. Those are the times we will be lifted into realms we never thought possible. And yes that theme is in the movie too ("Look past the figures").

"... suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." (Romans 5 v5)