Jeremiah 32: 1-15 and Luke 16: 19-31. September 20 2019.
Rev Dr Barbara Peddie

If you go up the Whanganui River, past the small towns and farms along the banks, and into the wilder gorge country, you’ll find the Bridge to Nowhere. It was constructed early last century, with the hope of opening up a valley and putting in a farming community. Sometime in the Eighties I walked across it – there’s nothing at the other end. The farms failed, and the roads were never built, and the barges that used to ply the river and service upriver farms stopped running. Somewhere along the way, a dream died. The chasm between hope and experience couldn’t be bridged. Continue reading Chasms →

October 6th, 2019; by Rev Dr Barbara Peddie.
Readings: Lamentations 1 – 6, 3, 19-26, and Luke 17, 5 – 10.

I looked at the readings set down in the Lectionary for this particular Sunday in October, and I looked at the ones set down for World Communion Sunday – and I thought, well, even though at first reading there seems to be a disconnect between the two, I would go with the first option because, in a strange way, it sits side by side with the vision of all sharing at Christ’s table. And I left in the Psalm set down for World Communion Sunday because it pulls us out of preoccupation with our own small worlds. Continue reading Hard Times →

‘Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law.’ Romans 3: 31

There was once a woman who, whenever she got a roast ready for the oven, always trimmed off the end. She had done it for years – ever since she began running her own household. Until the day when a friend asked: ’Why do you do that?’ So she stopped and thought about it, and realised that she was doing exactly what her mother always did when she prepared a roast. So she thought some more, and called her mother. Who said: ‘Well, dear, my roasting dish wasn’t quite big enough.’ Continue reading Law and Legality →

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees the global population of forcibly displaced people increased by 2.3 million in 2018.  By the end of that year, almost 70.8 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violations.

Such numbers arriving at the boarders puts extreme pressure on stable nations and fuels fear, racism and xenophobia.  All of which contribute to outrageous acts of inhumanity.  But being a refugee is also devastating and dehumanising for the refugees. Continue reading Exiles, Lepers, and Displaced Persons →