Many years ago I had the pleasure of taking a skiing trip to New Zealand, to a place in the North Island called Mt Ruapehu. Apart from spraining my ankle on the way to the airport, travelling to New Zealand on crutches and spending a week waiting for the winds to die down so that the ski field could be open, we had a great time. Half a days skiing for a weeks travel, awesome! What amazed me while I was there was the volcano warning system. Not something you come across in Australian ski fields but an all-too-real problem for skiers in the land of the long white cloud. There were special rally points where you had to ski to if the volcano warning siren sounded. These were places protected from the lava flows and lahars. It all sounded very scary but as all of the locals assured me, it was a rare event and I would have plenty of warning of impending danger.

With this in mind I was interested to see on the news that Mt Ruapehu erupted this week with less than a minutes warning, sending lava and lahars cascading down the ski fields, blocking roads and causing disruption to the rail lines. While it would have made exciting skiing I am so glad that I wasn’t there to enjoy the rush. Isn’t it funny that we can be one minute enjoying the pleasures of this life, the soft, cool snow and then the next we can be surrounded by the fires of Hell, with no escape. Such is the reality of life. Without preparation, the skier would be lost, unable to find their way to safety. Without preparation, the human being IS lost. When our life melts like snow in a lava flow it is good to know that we have already sorted out the next bit, by finding peace with the Lord through Jesus Christ.

In love, not lava, Alan