The Bible Bloke

When I was a boy, a very long time ago, we had a little cottage at the beach. It wasn’t a mansion by any means, a couple of bedrooms, basic kitchen, lounge room, fibro and lino. A wonderful place. It was a very short walk out the back to the quiet waves that lapped up on the sand where I would engage upon massive engineering projects with my yellow Tonka dump truck: My favourite toy at the time. The front law was a different matter. The front lawn was a clover infested nightmare. But it was super sweet dreams for the local bee population, who found it without any hesitation. The problem with small boys is they don’t wear shoes. At least I never did. I can hear my mother’s voice: “Christopher, put some shoes on.” Nah. Out the door in flash and a rattle. Most of the time out the back onto the beach. That was my happy place. But sometimes, it was out the front, through the clover, through the bees. In bare feet. I think there is something in that saying that insanity is doing the same thi...

My devotional reading this morning was from the book of Exodus. Let me set the scene: Moses had gone up the mountain and while he was fully engaged with the Lord, the people were not. Where is this man Moses, who lead us out of Egypt? We do not know what has happened to him. And what of this God? Even in spite of the miracles and wonders they had witnessed they chose to make an idol and we know how that ended. In reading this section something occurred to me that perhaps I had been aware of before but never really clicked to. The wilderness they found themselves in was a wilderness that God had not just created but had also chosen. Generally, when I think of wilderness, I have an image of somewhere remote, somewhere isolated. Wilderness is not something conducive with comfort. It’s not glamping, there is a roughness around its edges. When I hear the term “wilderness experience” I am reminded of a bush walk I undertook, many years ago , in the South Island of New Zealand. I was much yo...