blog blong jon

It has been cooler, I have a sweatshirt and shocks on while writing this. Not many bugs flying about, the ants seem to be a lot less and no bites from centipedes.

What have we been doing this week? I’ve spent a lot of time bleeding the generator. The coconut oil is not all its cracked up to be and even though the concept is great, a renewable local resource, because it is not refined and therefore pure enough, it will end up damaging the generator – so sadly we will be going back to diesel. Add to that a week of mainly cloud and hence little solar charging, we have had to use the batteries sparingly.

So some nights this past week we have sat around the table with candles, in fact we thought of writing a blog called, 101 things to do with a candle. Phillip found burning hair was cool (but it stinks), so he began pulling out more hair and burning it. By the way, Viv’s hair is fine and fine hair tends to curl up faster and burn quicker, and perhaps not smell as much!

About the cloud - again when we tried to watch the All Blacks the cloud stopped the signal to the Tata schools’ new satellite dish, so we went online to read what was happening.

Even though it’s been cloudy, there has not been much rain. All of Talua’s rain water tanks are empty. So we are drinking the water from the tap which is not very clean – we boil it. Many of the students walk up the road a few kilometers to get water from a clean stream. We have a gas top and so boiling water is easy and quick. The students cook on open fires.

 

Last Sunday I preached at the evening service, the topic was the Kingdom of God - see a bit of it below. Some staff and students didn’t like it, why? Well, cos I’m from a different culture therefore I am removed from the Vanuatu culture; I can bring a measure of objectivity to what I see. So last week I named a couple of small things that happen in Vanuatu that are un-kingdom of God, they happen here without people really knowing they are happening.

So what do I think the kingdom of God is?

The upside down kingdom

The Kingdom of God is where people’s hearts and relationships have been enabled by the Spirit of God to live in subordination to the reign of God.

The kingdom of God is the upside down kingdom. We as humans tend to put us first whereas the kingdom of God does not work that way. It is where the first come last and the last come first. Where the rich are the poor and the poor are the rich. Where winning is losing and losing is wining. The Kingdom of God is where to live for oneself is to die and to die to ones own live is to live. It is where justice, compassion and mercy rule.

It is where the poor in spirit are in possession of the kingdom of heaven. Where those who mourn are comforted, where the meek (that is humble in spirit and manner) will inherit the earth. As for the proud - well woe to them - they miss out. The proud, the arrogant, the ones who think they have life all sorted - they miss out.

The upside down kingdom is where Jesus calls us to be helpful to our enemies, to be good friends with those deemed to be despicable or contemptible. The upside down kingdom is where we are to be friends with prostitutes (try it sometime), where we become friends with a kava bar owner or a criminal. Where we are to exchange pursuit of status to a pursuit of slavery. The upside down kingdom is where we change our whole approach to money

 

…ohh that hurt, you can blog about anything but keep away from talking about money, preachers always stuff up when preaching about money…

 

that last bit is not from the sermon, its more thinking over things since then. I mentioned in an email to someone how we as a family we went to a resort and ate two pizzas last week. Tasted pretty darn good to be honest. The tricky part is the cost of the two pizzas, chips and whatnot equated to a reasonable percentage of a Talua student’s annual fees. Today I ordered a part for the laptop. Simple as abc, just a few clicks on the laptop and its done, painless and effortless and more money than the students or staff get in a month. It’s scary to ponder what we do with our wealth. It is also scary ponder that we rarely have the ability to suss and critique our own cultures spending habits cos we are part of the culture and spend in the same manor. 

So when it was explained to some of the staff what I meant when I said it seems many people in Vanuatu lie, “that its culturally acceptable to lie”, they said “no we don’t” but when lying was explained fuller they said “but we do that all the time, its normal,”. They don’t consider the lying to actually be lying and can’t see that its “wrong”

In NZ we spend up large on stuff we don’t need, “but we do that all the time, its normal,”  We don’t even think twice that what we are doing is against the kingdom of God. In fact the previous sentence seems way over the top cos we have become so enculturated. I wonder if in NZ we are doing a pile of things that are “wrong” but don’t even know? It seems we complain about the past generations mistakes very quickly yet forget we are digging our own hole.

 

Oh well
lets go to hell
with a pile of shopping

 

God Bless

Jon