Here's a link to the very thought-provoking Blog of Richard Wesley.  See below where he tells us about his experiences in the Christchurch earthquake!

Richard Wesley's blog:

Other links of interest:

 Following  this link , you'll find the home page of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand.  There's a link there to the Book of Order, which can be downloaded as a PDF file.  There's also information on our Church's organization, its subcommittees and their work.

Follow this link, and you'll find a list of other Presbyterian Church websites in New Zealand. You can visit them, and see what they do. Maybe you'll get some new ideas for what we might do in our Church.

 Click on this link to go to the home page of a website that covers a whole range of Islamic beliefs, doctrines, and its relationship to other religions, from an Islamic point of view. Look in particular at the sub-topics concerning "women", and "Terrorism and Islam". You may be surprised.

Do you have any wise words or Christian insights to offer?  Send them in, and they'll appear on this page.

This is a terrible conclusion to come to.  Many, especially the young, have grown so accustomed to the apparently even tenor of Life in Godzone country that they think it will always stay that way.  The Biblical Prophets throughout the Old Testament mourned and railed against the insensibility of the people.

The first account is in Exodus, chapter 32.  Moses and Joshua spend 40 days on Mount Horeb receiving stone tablets containing the ten commandments.  But the people grew bored waiting for them, and compelled Aaron to build a golden calf, around which Moses found them dancing when he descended.  Moses gets hacked off, and breaks the tablets.

We still dance around a variety of golden calves, obsessed with essentially trivial things (vapid TV programs, radio shock-jocks, talk-back, the sensationalist tabloid front page of the Herald) while the gap between the haves and have-nots grows, greedy bankers destroy the financial structures of Europe, and political leaders thresh like headless chooks attempting to salvage something from the mess.

So here is a parable, which I first heard read out on Kim Hill's excellent Saturday morning National Radio program.

A Parable of Debt

This post appeared recently at this URL:
http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/172318-the-greek-bail-out

It is a slow day in a little Greek Village. The rain is beating down and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.

On this particular day a rich German tourist is driving through the village, stops at the local hotel and lays a €100 note on the desk, telling the hotel owner he wants to inspect the rooms upstairs in order to pick one to spend the night.

The owner gives him some keys and, as soon as the visitor has walked upstairs, the hotelier grabs the €100 note and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the €100 note and runs down the street to repay his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the €100 note and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel.

The guy at the Farmers' Co-op takes the €100 note and runs to pay his drinks bill at the tavern.

The tavern owner slips the money along to the local "lady of the night" drinking at the bar, who has also been facing hard times and has had to offer him "services" on credit.

She then rushes to the hotel and pays off her room bill to the hotel owner with the €100 note.

The hotel proprietor then places the €100 note back on the counter so the rich traveller will not suspect anything.

At that moment the traveller comes down the stairs, picks up the €100 note, states that the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town.

No one produced anything.

No one earned anything.

However, the whole village is now out of debt and looking to the future with a lot more optimism...

"He who has ears to hear, let him hear."