18th November 2020

One of things that I love about Sydney is the ‘Southerly Buster’. Of course that’s not the name of a street thug from Sydney south, but the name of a wonderful weather event. I’m not sure if it’s a phenomenon that occurs in other locations, but certainly none of the places where I have previously lived, particularly in northern Australia, where there’s nothing to bust the summer heat. But to have a weather event that can drop the temperature by twenty degrees in less than half an hour is “heavenly”.

Strange to say that there was once a ‘Heavenly Buster’. The Book records that in that transition phase from Old Testament to New Testament, a Heavenly Buster swept through Jerusalem and blew away the religious air that had become stuffy and suffocating. It says that the men who had been the Carpenter’s apprentices were together, when ‘suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting’.

Ironically though, instead of cooling the place down, it actually raised the spiritual temperature, and to such a degree that each person took on the appearance of a candle! And then came such powerful and clear speaking about that Carpenter from Nazareth, which rapidly changed the temperature in Jerusalem, as these new Apostles spoke with such authority and hope about times of refreshing that had come into this world. And O for that Buster to blow again through our land.

DM 18^th November 2020