September 2023
As I write this, our town is still in the midst of the tourist season. It has taken a few years after COVID disrupted everything, but numbers of visitors have bounced back.
Who can blame the folk from down south coming north for some winter sun and a chance to see our beautiful part of the world at its best?
In the first century it was not the climate that drove Christians to leave Jerusalem and travel to other parts of the world – it was persecution. Rather than settling down to comfortable lives at home, they were compelled to travel, and take the good news about Jesus with them.
In cities like Corinth which was a centre of commerce and the military, people were constantly moving through and around the area. Christians who were living there had a constant stream of people with whom they could interact. It was not so much traveling to the mission field as it was having the mission field come to them.
Of course, Corinth was not an easy place to live for Jesus. But it, and many other places, gave opportunities for the gospel of Christ to be shared and spread.
We should look at the visitors to our town in the same way. Some of them already know Jesus and we are encouraged when they visit our church. But many others have never had the gospel impact their lives.
Keep an eye out for those who may be passing through our town. How can you show them the love of Jesus in the short time they are here?
Pastor Murray
August 2023
As I write this, it is cold. Very cold. Well, sort of.
To be honest, we really don’t know what cold is here in Mareeba. 10 degrees really is not all that cold and yet when the mercury gets down to that point, we feel as if the ice age has arrived.
What I find surprising though, is how all of us feel it here in winter. We have people who have come from many different lands to be here. Many of them have come from countries and regions where they get a true winter – snow, frost and all that. A Mareeba winter should not even make a blip on their radar.
But wait a year or two, and they too start to put on a jumper in the July and August mornings, like the rest of us.
It is amazing how quickly we can acclimatise to where we are. We become used to what is normal (in Mareeba, that means heat) and we notice it when the changes roll around.
It’s not only weather that we acclimatise to. We get very used to circumstances around us. I can struggle to remember the way we did many things before COVID and the lockdowns brought so many changes to the way we live our lives. Our world is always changing, and in many things it is good to be adaptable.
But there are some things that don’t change. Truth does not change – despite what some people might say. As we have seen, in recent years people have taken ideas that are laughable and declared that they are the truth – and expected everyone to go along with them.
We must not acclimatise to falsehood. God is truth and truth is absolute. As the goalposts shift around us, we need to keep our eyes on the truth that God lays out in His Word.
God is not a man, that He should lie, nor a son of a man, that He should change His mind. Does He speak and not act? Does He promise and not fulfill? Numbers 23:19
God does not change. Stay fixed on the truth that is in Him.
Pastor Murray