INTRODUCTION

New Zealand is nicknamed the "Shaky Isles"! Earthquakes were a regular fact of life while I was growing up in my home country. The city where I was born and raised was destroyed by an earthquake in 1931, with the loss of 256 lives. My parents were barely in their teens when they both experienced this tragedy.

 

New Zealand exists as a result of the tension between the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates pushing the connecting edges of both plates upward, with the tips forming the two main islands of New Zealand, the land of four million people and 120 million sheep! It's where the "Lord of the Rings" movies were made and it really is just as beautiful as they depict.

 

However, a little over a week ago, the lives of the people of Christchurch, New Zealand's largest southern city, were changed forever in an instant, in what is being called the nation's greatest natural disaster!

 

The earthquake that struck on February 22nd destroyed much of the city and has taken at least 220 precious lives.

 

It is a harsh reminder that any stability and security we think the natural world offers can be swept out from under our feet in an instant.

 

My cousin David Peters, from New Zealand, has a strong and growing international prophetic ministry. Here are some of his recent thoughts about Christchurch. "Job 14:7-9 came strongly to me. It says, 'There is hope for a tree; if it is cut down, it will sprout again and its new shoots will not fail. Its roots may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant.'

 

It struck me that Christchurch was founded with godly roots, was given a godly name and was initially a God-conscious community. The vision of the founders was to have a Christian city. Within a few years that vision was challenged and the tree of God-consciousness started to be cut down, so that in our day there has been only a stump left. Yet I felt the Lord say there was hope. ‘At the scent of water’ new growth would come. In other words at the stirring of the Spirit, God-consciousness would grow again."

 

In a world of rapid and increasing instability in the Middle East, unprecedented flooding in Australia, earthquakes in New Zealand and political turmoil in America, we must more than ever insure that our feet are firmly planted upon the immovable Rock of Christ. And let us be reassured that the deeper the darkness, the brighter the light!