Lunch time post

It is Wednesday lunch time. I have come to work, but an influenza bug has hit me. I am mostly hiding in my office staying away from people. There are groups of people upstairs chatting in Space2B but some regulars are not there because of this influenza.

Big birthday today..

Today my wife qualifies for the "old age pension". Wow, where did the years go? I have bought and presented one present with some more to get. We have been invited out to my son's place for the evening meal. We have been told that I could join her on the pension, but at the moment I will continue in ministry.

Amazing communication age.

• We busy ourselves communicating. On Monday we went shopping in a new Supermarket in town. I was wandering waiting for my wife to finish, while gazing blankly at our fellow shoppers. Then it struck me that so many of them were busy on their phones. The woman waiting at the checkout counter while the clerk priced her shopping was busy texting. A couple had returned to their car and unloaded their shopping trolley, I could see both were texting. Many of the shoppers wandering the isles were texting.  Others you could see were checking emails on their phones. It just hit me that so many had their phone in their hands and were busy on it. 
• Communication is so fast! On Sunday a group of us were talking and one man who owned a restaurant in Invercargill (the southern most city of NZ)  told how he had a small fire in the restaurant. He was still in Dunedin, getting ready to drive down to Invercargill, and he was receiving phone calls from people who had seen news of the event on line! He was amazed at how fast the news spread. I know that at the fire service some years ago something happened to Dunedin fire fighters at an officers' course in Australia. The local chief officers heard about it via phone calls and were digesting the news, working out how best to respond.  It astounded me that within minutes fire fighters up and down the country had heard about it! Communication is so very quick and easy these days.
• It brings the distant near. A man from the United Arab Emirates read my blog site and contacted me via Skype. We talked and messaged many times backward and forward. He was young and a Muslim. I am old and a Christian. But we chatted backward and forward at various times until it became awkward because he would want to chat when I had other duties. His grandmother died and he talked to me about it asking my advice about what to do. It amazed me, this man I have never actually met, in a country different and far away, communicated with me at a relatively personal level. I write on this blog site. I have a widget that tells me where in the world people are reading pages on my blog site. Lately there seems to be regular readers in Russia! Now I would love to know why people in Russia would want to regularly read the rantings of a heretic minister in a little city in the South Island of New Zealand? It is mind boggling that words I pen here reach that far so quickly!