If you’ve travelled along South Road recently you’d have seen that the T2D project is well underway. According to the promotional material, ‘drivers will be able to bypass 21 sets of traffic lights between the River Torrens and Darlington as they travel through two separate tunnels, connected by an open motorway’ saving up to 40 minutes in travel time! That’s the clincher isn’t it? We’ll be able to get to wherever we’re going quicker! Which, it seems, is what life is about these days. Quicker. Immediately. Instantly.

A 2015 Time Magazine article infamously reported that people now have shorter attention spans than goldfish*! (Are you still with me?)

So, perhaps we can relate to Habakkuk’s four-word cry: “How long, O Lord?” (even if it’s probably expecting too much to ask you to read the other 1384 words attributed to him).

It’s not just a lament for us in our instant-gratification world, but a challenge. Especially since God seems to run by his own schedule.

But, now that we’ll have an extra 40 minutes because of the T2D project you might spend 5 minutes of that time reading those other 1384 words.

Pastor John Strelan

* In case you were wondering, according to the article, goldfish have an attention span of 9 seconds.

Rihanna and A$AP Rocky welcome third child together. That was a headline in an online newspaper this week. Normally I wouldn’t give that sort of headline a second glance, but this made me wonder, what’s in a name? Apparently Rihanna (a.k.a Robyn Rihanna Fenty) and A$AP Rocky (a.k.a Rakim Athelston Mayers) already have two sons whom they named RZA and Riot. This third child they named Rocki Irish (it’s a girl, obviously!)

What’s in a name? Identity? Connection? Belonging? Attention? All of the above? Jesus told a story once about a poor man named Lazarus (I don’t think he was a rapper). The name means ‘Cared for by God’. There’s a lot in a name.

Pastor John Strelan

Think of a parable.

Which one are you thinking of? Is it ‘The Prodigal Son’? What a wonderful picture of God. Maybe ‘The Good Samaritan’. That’s a classic. Perhaps you’re thinking of ‘The Lost Sheep’, or ‘The Lost Coin’ (if you are, I hope you are rejoicing!) Or, maybe it’s ‘The Sower’, or ‘The Mustard Seed’? Whichever one it is, I am almost certain you aren’t thinking of the parable Jesus tells in Luke 16:1-13. ‘The Dishonest Manager’, or ‘The Shrewd Manager’. And, I am equally certain that when you go and read it in a moment you won’t come away thinking “What a wonderful picture of God!” And, maybe that’s the point. Sometimes God speaks to us in ways we don’t expect and through people we would never imagine.