Australian Outback Tea

I was kindly bought a tin of Australian Outback Tea. It is ‘Australian grown and packed’, which is great, as I assumed it would be Indian grown and packed in China. Unlike other teas which claim an association with a particular land or region but have little to do with it, Outback Tea is authentic.

I have thrice been to Australia, but never to the ‘Outback’, that vast, sparsely populated expanse of territory inside which even few Australians deign, or dare, to live. Quite why a tea should be named after so hostile a place, I cannot say, though some do live there, and I guess they enjoy drinking tea as much as the next Bruce or Sheila. And when I drank it, did I not taste the dry heat, the scorched trees, the sandy soils, the ever-blue skies of that immense land? I really felt that I did, but I suspect it is the power of suggestion. Yet for having been grown and packed in Oz, I can claim to have tasted it nonetheless.

This arid wilderness through which we currently pass is a truly hostile environment but we are granted tokens and sips, from time to time, of our journey’s end and final destination. A little flavour of heaven we sometimes detect during times of worship, Bible reading, fellowship and even while simply going about our business. Heaven might seem distant, but our occasional sampling its flavours remind us of its reality and wonder.

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Phil 3:12, NKJV