“When Jesus heard him, he stopped and said, “Tell him to come here.” So, they called the blind man. “Cheer up,” they said. “Come on, he’s calling you!””
Mark10:49
I’m doing another lap through the Bible, and in reading Mark I was really struck again by the story of Blind Bartimaeus. The crowd which had been just telling him to shut up, suddenly responded to Jesus and exhorted Bartimaeus. I was struck by the power of their words, “he’s calling you.” This is such a ‘get up and get on with it’, ‘follow’ statement isn’t it. We’re been full-time volunteers for decades, but we still need to hear from Jesus to be encouraged. I sure was when these words leapt out at me. It doesn’t matter if we’re 33 years in or 3 years – to know that Jesus is calling us is makes such a difference doesn’t it? For each of us, you and I: our diverse vocations [callings] are spiritual. He’s calling us, each one of us. And boy doesn’t that put a spring in our step? I am confident that for you and I, whether teaching or building a business, or farming or raising a family we can walk out our calling dragging our feet on autopilot- or with a deep and fresh sense of feeling called.
We’ve had another big twelve months – we were in Ukraine last April/May and are planning to head back again this August. We have been in contact recently with our friends in Ukraine – they are very tired.
We ran two Discipleship Training Schools (DTS) in Newcastle, one of which has just come back from Fiji, and we’ve just started another DTS up at Tahlee. David has just returned from a brief pastoral visit to the team in Fiji and was amazed again at the openness of Fijians. The first outreach with the team was in a hospital, and the first person he talked to was a young carpenter who promptly gave his life to Jesus.
A new adventure for us has been reaching out to the Syrians in our Newcastle community. We’ve adopted a few families in the area and hosted different events both up at Tahlee and down in Newcastle. I believe we are really starting to make an impact in their lives. These are people who have lost siblings under the Assad regime in Syria, have managed to get asylum in Australia, and are desperately trying to enter into the Australian way of life. They spend hours trying to get to sleep every night because the trauma doesn’t leave them when they put their heads on the pillow.
Of course, our Australian way of life is centred around the One who made us and they certainly hearing a lot about him. I’m struck that God talks a lot about the widows, about the orphans, but he also talks about the alien or the stranger amongst us. I think it’s the strangers amongst us that have been overlooked by society and the church. They are very grateful for our friendship and I certainly hope that they can know the friendship of Jesus alongside our friendship into the future.
On the family front, our big news is that Nathan is engaged to a very nice young lady called Anna who he met at his church City Light in Sydney. They get married in July.
