All The Major Highways Are Completely Congested With Tarmac

The four million-strong population of New Zealand is a bit spread out.

As a result, national radio stations wishing to broadcast travel news inadvertantly develop a 90-second hole in their schedule in the quieter regions.

“Hi Steve, well the southbound country-lane is gridlocked by slow-moving oxygen this morning, while there are also major hold-ups five hundred miles north of here. What? You want me to fill for another 70 seconds? Flippin’ ‘eck…”

And this is where the company that I work for comes in.

They’ve been making daily 90-second filler shows for about 6 years now, each one offering listeners a modern-day parable to digest. They’re presented by high-profile Kiwi Christians, and often get subsequently repeated on other stations, including within my weekly show on Hope City FM.

Being an ex-BBC Christian, part of my job is to sort much of this 2,000-strong archive out in preparation for podcasting on the internet, but another lovely part of what I do is helping to put new shows together.

As a result, I’ve had the pleasure of listening to a great deal of this uplifting material, as well as editing and reading it. I’m also looking forward to writing some.

It’s fair to say that this is the first job I’ve had that I have really believed in, and the first employer that I’ve believed in too, not least because they seem to believe in me.

They even did a special payrun for me this week.

So today, Saturday, after over a year of trusting God to provide me with a job, I did something very normal, and yet to me miraculous.

I went to the ATM machine, I got some money out, and then I went shopping at Foodtown.