A journey to Molesworth Station, Marlborough, New Zealand
From Seddon one turns up the Awatere valley on the road that soon becomes a gravel track.
We took the Taylor pass over the Wither Hills to join the Molesworth road, The picture to the left shows the valley as it appears once joining the road.
Taylor Pass is the roughest part of the journey from Blenheim to Molesworth, one has to watch the ruts and the gravel on a winding mountain track. The gravel road to Molesworth is much the better.
Few tourists ever take this journey, for one thing, hire cars are not permitted on unsealed roads so this is very much a journey for locals. From Molesworth you can drive through to Hanmer Springs, but the road is only open during the Summer months.
Driving though this part of New Zealand is an awe inspiring experience and we found it easy to praise God for His creative handiwork.
Sadly in our world of naturalism this viewpoint is submerged in the minds of many people. We live in an age when everything has to have a scientific answer and God does not come into consideration.
People who are 'God conscious' will be moved by such scenery, it is quite unique, and speaks of God who invites us to see every aspect of His world as unique and every person and creature in it.
Sylvia and I have had the privilege of ministering in St Christopher's Anglican church Blenheim South for three months where I was the locum minister. However this was not all that we were up to and our main focus was to train people to share their faith in Jesus Christ. We had twenty-five people in our training.
People in New Zealand seem to be more open to the Good News of Jesus than here in Western Australia where we actually have our home.
Maybe it is because NZ is a grand country that lifts a person's vision higher than the world of material being, or perhaps it is because in NZ people are very conscious of the ephemeral nature of life, living as people do in an earthquake prone land.
In Western Australia people seem to be more materialistic and closed in on their world of things and success. In Perth most people live on the wide sand plane upon which the city sits, houses are excessively large and close together. People do not look outwardly upon God's creation but inwardly, bound by their modern homes. In the South Island of NZ most homes that we have visited have views of hills and mountains, they are inescapable vistas.
I sometimes wonder whether the modern enclosed home acts as a psychological enclosure that has no room for God.
Traveling up the Ataware
The river can be a 'fearsome beast' as someone called it,but this was a dry season and rain was much needed so the river was low.
Some hundred and twenty kilometres later and we had passed through towering mountains across a swing bridge and along the side of the river gorge. finally we emerged in Molesworth Station the largest station in NZ.
The white capped mountains were no longer on some distant horizon they were all about us as we came to the station.
Heaven must be even more wonderful than this. We who know the Lord look forward to an eternity in the most glorious new creation that ever could be imagined.
Many years ago we did a locum in Norway and with our young son, we went up the side of a fiord and ventured into a meadow of soft green grass and buttercups and surveyed the water in the fiord stretching out beyond a quaint wooden farm house. I remember thinking that heaven must be like that scene and it has remained imprinted on my mind ever since.
People who live in their closed-in world where the vista is the one of the games room, the entertainment room, the family room and the fence outside, miss so much.
Yet this is what the modern mind aspires to and preferably with access to a beach where people can hardly ever venture since the mortgage is so high and demands much attention to work.
Venturing up the valley the river disappears into pools, of course in a wet season it would be very different.
The life of he Christian Church in the Western World is like this river in a dry season, it lacks any energy to achieve anything. In much of the developing world the story is very different.
I have read that the life of the church in Nigeria is like a river in flood by comparison. How sad it is to see the world of western materialism going no where and missing out on eternity with our Lord.
What is more if you are filled with the Spirit of the living God you will feel the urgency of the times that demands attention to the Gospel
The old homestead in Molesworth is a symbol of a world that is very different. A place of struggle and effort that reminds us that there is no 'cheap grace' in our faith.
Have you thought of venturing into the world of the Spirit?
Heaven, an eternal relationship with God in Christ, is a free gift, that cannot be earned nor deserved, such a gift can only be received.
Yet once we have received it we belong to Christ Jesus who is Lord of our lives. What! you may exclaim, are we to be subjects to Jesus? well you are already subject to this world, no one is a fee agent no matter how she or he may think. To be subject to Christ is perfect freedom as the collect in the Book of Common Prayer puts it.
We seemed to travel for ever to get out of Western Australia, hour after hour towing our small caravan with car and van overloaded with last minute things.
Finally at Eucla and the last stop in WA. Here you see over the coastal plane from the camp site.
Penong was the first experience of civilization after entering South Australia, a dry place with windmills to advertise its dependence upon artesian water. It took us four days to get out of WA and a further couple of days to reach Penong, known for its windmills, and there we stopped to camp.
