Back after so long away

I have not posted anything new for quite sometime (as you may have noticed). My last few postings were all about trying to sell my house in Auckland and God's possible involvement in that process. I was pushing the line that he was interested in human stuff, which I believe. The Christian understanding of the Incarnation suggests that He is - i.e. God sent Jesus as a way of saying (and to have Jesus say, though not in so many words) I. God, am interested in human stuff because I'm interested in, have love and compassion for, humans.

So the house was sold and on October 20 2006 my wife and I moved from the city of Auckland to the City of Whangarei, some 108 miles further north. It was a day of considerable drama that ended well. I may bore you with the details at another time.

The suburb we have fetched up in is very leafy and picturesque. There are many 'bush reserves' - or for those who don't speak Kiwi - tracts of indigenous forest, one of which borders our place. On a quiet day you can stand on the edge of the forest and hear the stream in the valley way below.

From our lounge you can see the Western Hills, a range of heavily forested hills to the west(obviously) of the city, and to the north-east you can see, from the kitchen window, the memorial that stands on the mountain known as Parihaka. You see only the memorial to those who fell in the World Wars, because the trees in the immediate environs obscure the mountain itself. At night the red illuminated cross makes the memorial easier to find. By day a pair of binoculars are helpful.

At the rear of the house is the garden, full of trees and flowering shrubs and rose bushes. There is a nice piece of lawn which I have to mow every two weeks and which, along with some lesser sections of lawn, takes me about an hour to mow with my non-self-propelled petrol mower. And at the end of the garden is mother-in-law's cottage. She moves in soon. She too had a house to sell!

It feels as though we made a good choice, and believing as we do that God got us here (though it is entirely possible we might have got here without or despite him) we should wake every morning with expressions of thankfulness spilling from our mouths.

I need to post some photos so you can see for yourselves just how beautiful this suburb is and understand why we are so happy to be here.

Take care y'all - of yourselves and each other. "May your lives be filled with light, except when you're trying to sleep"