Today’s guest writer is Mark Beale who is priest in charge at St Alban the Martyr, Balmoral, Auckland. Prior to this he was minister of St Elizabeth’s Anglican Church, Clendon, a South Auckland church which he planted 28 years earlier. Mark was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2001 for Read More
Lockdown produces some interesting by-products, one that I have witnessed is that fathers appear to have more time to interact with their children. It started me thinking about my own father who died a couple of years ago. I largely have very positive memories of my father. He was a man who was brought up Read More
If I am honest I have always desired to make my mark in the world. I guess in some ways we are all trying to achieve something to stand out, to create a legacy, change the world in some way. In fact in our modern age a whole industry of self-help schemes and coaching for Read More
An old man was doing his daily walk along the beach one morning, when he spotted a young boy crouched by the water, scooping something up from the sand and throwing it into the sea. The beach was normally empty at this time of day, and so the old man stopped to watch for a Read More
by Tony McKeown – Lessons from the Puriri Tree: Twenty-eight years ago, I planted a native Puriri tree on the boundary of our newly acquired home. It was a spindly little thing, and a lonely offering amidst a barren and uninspiring landscape. I recall sitting by the newly turned soil and wishing it well, as the Read More
I was recently looking through the bookshelf at PK when I came across a book on Heroes of the Faith. I started to thumb through it and noticed many names I knew but also many names I didn’t. As I have mentioned previously, we are moving to a new community about 45 minutes from where Read More
As a family we are in the process of moving from one house to another, interestingly the new one is only two thirds of the size of the house we presently live in. This means we are going through all our possessions and making decisions about what to keep and what to let go of. Read More
I love it when my daily Bible readings reveal things that I may not have considered before. It is as though the scripture is opened up to reveal a new nuance on truth. I was reading Matthew 4 and the last verse in the chapter reads, “Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and Read More
Recently some friends of ours moved from our home town of Snells Beach North of Auckland to Christchurch. We spent nearly a full weekend saying farewell to them at different events. They had been in our lives for 16-years and it was fascinating listening to speeches and hearing different people’s perspectives. One of the events Read More
Last time I shared about attending a family funeral and the things it highlighted to me. Prior to our family member passing away, I’d had discussions with them on matters of belief. We even discussed his spiritual worldview. At those times I found he was not forthcoming in sharing, instead our conversations were brief and Read More