The last time I was in the Blue Mountains, in 2011, a funeral was on my mind. 

My father had died in Auckland on a Wednesday. The funeral was set for the following Monday. And I faced the dilemma of whether to fulfil a commitment to speak at a mission conference in Katoomba from Friday until Sunday. In the end I decided to go, largely because I felt it was what Dad would have wanted me to do.  

This past week I was in the Blue Mountains and, once again, a funeral was on my mind.

I decided to go across to support friends whose son had died, after a long battle with depression had overwhelmed him. The service of ‘lament and thanksgiving’ was raw and real and profound, as the words of parents and brothers mingled with the words of hymns and scriptures to express both grief and hope. 

I stayed with friends further up the mountains, in Wentworth Falls. The Blue Mountains is one of those places on earth that fills me with jaw-drop awe. These vast basins of bush, filled with eucalyptus trees … are gorgeous. When I contemplate the ‘multitude that no-one could count’ from Revelation 7, it is to these basins to which my imagination often travels—and seeing filled with those ‘from every nation, tribe, people and language’.

For most of the intervening decade, Barby and I have been based in Bangalore. We made multiple visits to the Nilgiri Hills of South India. From a distance, it is uncanny how similar their tea gardens are to these eucalyptus trees…

… but then, ‘Nilgiris’, when translated into English, means ‘Blue Mountains’!

Three years ago, the world watched in horror as a fire raged its way through these Blue Mountains. I asked my friends, Ian and Jill, if we could drive to some of the places ravaged by this fire. 

Do you see what I see?

The fires brought death to a place of such beauty. Creation groaned—and grieved. Blackened trunks and stumps were everywhere. And yet, three years later, hope is everywhere as well. Both the scars of grief and the signs of hope filled every vista.

I couldn’t stop asking to stop so that I could keep taking photos. 

Not for the first time, I found myself lost in jaw-drop awe as I reflected on the similarity in the ways in which God works in his creation and his new creation. Our hearts can be ravaged by grief, as it burns away all that is alive in our lives. Goodness me. Could the grief of losing a son, a brother, a father in these circumstances be any deeper? I cannot imagine it.

And yet, grief is grief. It always has this way of feeling huge for the one experiencing it. However, as is the case in those Blue Mountains, so also is it true in our own lives. Under God’s loving and sovereign hand, there is something else going on as well…

nice chatting

Paul