A much needed talk about Hope

It seems like everywhere we look there is bad news; shootings live on air, natural disasters, moral indecency, poverty, suffering and genocides. It is so easy to look at these things with sadness and distress and worst of all with a sense of real dismay.

As Christians it is easy for us to look at this as signs that the end of days is coming and the apocalypse is beckoning. It is even easier for us to become disheartened by all that we see and hear, how can we possibly have hope? More and more people are choosing a life grounded in material goods, in lust and in sin. Where is the light in all of this?

The answer to this question is very simple, in fact the answer has never changed, and it is time to start reminding ourselves and our fellow Christians of this. The battle is already won, we don’t need to worry about losing. Paul reminds us perfectly of this in his letter to Corinthians: "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Corinthians 15:54-57) possibly more powerful and relevant when he continues: “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”

So when you read about over 29 million people paying to cheat on their marital partners, when injustice seems more prevalent then charity stand tall in faith brothers and sisters for “the LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love”-Psalms 147:11

“And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.”- Romans 5:5-7

Me, My God and I

I was trying to think of a way to start my blog and couldn't think of any better way then sharing my testimony, my story of how I came to the Lord

I was Born in Zimbabwe in 1995 to a Catholic family and I had a nice life (although I do not remember very much of it) but when I was 3 years old my dad died of Lung cancer which was truly a terrible loss for my family.
We were forced to move into a cottage, which was fine but quite the downgrade.

On the 29th of April 2000 Mum got remarried to a long time friend, Steven Callard. Steve was a great guy and treated my two brothers and I with such great love, as if we were his own children and on in the november of 2000 we moved to New Zealand.

Both Mum and Steve struggled to find decent Jobs in their trained fields but just to support us Steve took a Job at a pet food Factory and used to work 13 hour days Just to support us. He put himself through so much stress to support the women that he loved and her 3 boys and it got to him. One night when I was 6 years old, I woke up to go to the toilet and opened my bedroom door and infront of me was my step-dad being resuscitated by a paramedic, sadly he was unsuccessful, Steve had suffered a severe heart attack and died... just like that. There is something about hearing your mother cry that changes you, and for me at just the age of 6 hearing my mother weep in such a way made me change, made me realise that no, the world wan't a nice big place where everything was fair and easy.

Over the next few years life got a bit better and Mum continued to take us to mass every week and we attended cathlolic school. It wasn't until I came to year 9 (first year of High School) where my faith started to come under question. I had been going to a youth group in my Church, run by two amazing American girls, I started to think more and more about my faith but wasn't really "into" it.

The day I started to take my faith seriously was when someone questioned me:
They said to me "Luke, are you catholic"
I said "yea, I  suppose"
"Do you believe in God?"
"Yea"
"Then how do you know that God is Real?"

This made me think about my faith and my life and if God had ever really been there in my life because we had been through such horrible things, how could there be a "loving and Caring God" and then all of a sudden it hit me!
Through everything that happened, through the death, the pain and the suffering, God had been there.
After my step-dad died the support that we received from the community especially from our church, which is a normal and natural response from a church, was truly amazing. But the thing that struck me was the timing, there would be times when mum wasn't sure where the next meal was coming from, for example, but we were always looked after or provided for just when we needed it most. We were even blessed enough to have a house built for us by Habitat for humanity and now instead of paying rent on a house continuously she is paying a similar amount in mortgage for a house that we can, one day, call our own.

I know God is real because he is here for me and he has shown himself to me throughout my life. Although I have been experienced great pain and loss in my life I have received great blessings from the Lord and I will always be thankful to Him for a loving mother and for all the people who have helped me in my faith.