Napier Baptist

What does God's call feel like? Look like, sound like, taste like, smell like?

Does it sometimes feel like a weightless certainty, and at others as urgent as two labrador puppies on a leash - busting to get going but not 100% sure which direction, just away, just acting, not standing still!

Is it sometimes a burden,and other times a joy? Sometimes almost clear, other times a mystery? Sometimes close and other times all-enveloping?

Meantime I squirm in the pew, pray for guidance, look at all the options, feel like I'm not doing enough. And the call, the insistent, urgent, GET OFF THE TRACKS call... help me to decipher it.... please.

Please help me in praying for guidance, and for clarity. I would have said patience too, but I feel the impatience does not come from me...

As a church we have agreed to go ahead with the community garden project. We are going to build the gardens this Saturday morning. We have already had many kind offers of help. Someone donated $500, others are donating compost, untreated wood, seedlings, others soil and still others their skill and labour.

We decided in the end that we will split the plots - we will predominantly grow veges to give away as food but we will also grow seedlings to give away to encourage others to grow their own gardens. We figured the old saying of "give someone a fish you feed them for a day, teach them how to fish and you'll feed them for a lifetime" must also apply to veges. However, the reality is also that some of the people who come to or through our church do not have the land space or the physical, mental or emotional capacity to maintain a garden and therefore we will also need give away produce as well as seedlings. Our local area has a market that runs on a Tuesday morning and could be an ideal place to give away seedlings to encourage gardening. It is also possible that we could supply seedlings and food to some of the local networks who are part of the gardening initiative. We'll figure that stuff out as we go, but at the moment all eyes (and hopefully hands) are on building the plots.

Please go and read Ruth Gouldbourne's wonderful Advent post about a very difficult funeral within the Bloomsbury Baptist Church community. Having had to lead similarly difficult funerals, I especially loved her reminder that the promises of the Christian hope are promises and not answers.

Okay, so a few of us at NBC grew mos for Movember to raise money for our Relay for Life team. We are looking for the most stylish mo - not necessarily the bushiest but the most stylish. So, I'm wanting readers of this blog to tell me which mo they think is the most stylish. Write the number of the mo you think is the best into comments and feel free to suggest a name - e.g. I've called 5, 6, 12 "The Chopper" 13 "The Raurimu Spiral" 3 "The Coffee Stain":

2.

In the drought we long for mist; in the cool months, long-past summers fuel our dreams.

We live in a world in-between: forgetting to delight in the now. Forgetting to be present to the beauty that exists today.

This day.

Every day.

It's so hot and dry: the hills baked to the colour of ginger-crunch, the lake a desert oasis, the strange mist of a few mornings-ago a cool blessing.

The mist rose early, so deep that the world disappeared in its moist white embrace.

It pressed its damp cheeks to the house, repelling the sun that would disperse it.
We were all alone, marooned on an island of cloud.

Gone was the lavender outside the bathroom window; gone the burned grass bank behind it. Gone the rabbits, the pukekos, the hunting cat. The lake and ponds gone - erased from the canvas while we slept.

The mist pressed a cool compress to the baked earth. It smothered the sighs of the wilting olive trees, it caressed the dried arrangements that once bore fruit. It whispered to the land that one day the drought would end.

The quiet, shrouded earth rested, recovered a little.

The bell-bird who sips each morning from the flax flowers stayed in its nest. The tui in the gum, no more, no more.

No magpies gargled. No frogs creaked. No plants tap-tapped against the side of the house.

The morepork slept, his head pillowed on his chest, dreaming of the hunt just finished.

The clock ticked, time shuffled its weary feet, light imperceptibly slipped through the muffling mist.

The lavender - usually bee-buzzed by now - ghosted silently, empty against the window.
The trees tiptoed back into place, trailing cottony shrouds behind them.

Soft glints of sky peeled off the lake, the parched world was reviving.

The birds ran quiet sound checks before one by one rediscovering their voice, and they hailed the bright, hard sky as it returned.

Drought, broken for a brief time, is so much easier to bear. A promise glimpsed eases our pain, allowing us to appreciate anew the beauty here and now.

It's just a season: its time is limited.

The world will return to rights.

Relax, wait, enjoy.

This time too, will pass.