sustain:if:able kiwi

broken glass Pentecost prayer

Pentecost invites us outside the walls of the church. So as one small part of this year’s Pentecost celebrations at Opawa, we offered an afternoon walk around our community, to visit sites of significance and hear their stories. We visited where the new motorway had cut a swathe in the 1970’s, the first bridge in the 1880’s, the historic local homestead, our school and a local community centre.

At the school, we heard the census data, that makes our community one of the poorest in the city. We were then asked to walk on, praying in silence.

We walked across the play ground. A broken bottle had been smashed and one by one, the group bent down to pick up the pieces.

Silently. And then carry the pieces in our hands back to rubbish bins at the church. Silently.

I think I saw the Kingdom. The people of God praying by picking up the broken glass in our community. In anger at such stupidity. In practical expression of God’s Kingdom come in our school playground as it is in heaven.

It’s a Pentecost moment I will never forget and there is no other place and no other community and alongside no other people I would have rather been than today at 5:15 pm on a bitter, rainswept Christchurch afternoon.