The Afternoon of Life

The Year in Review   What a very busy year!   January was the beginning of “life coaching”.   Struggling to move from depression and grief, I joined forces with a very godly coach (Tommy Echols...thank you) to help get life back on track.   Mom’s loss the previous September pulled the rug out from under me in ways I couldn’t have imagined.   I had not realized how much she was part of me…the person I turned to for guidance…the person I turned to for sharing good news (or difficulties).   How I still miss her.   But life kept going and I needed to jump back into the fray. Sizeable checks had arrived from the inheritance my parents left.   This was not money I ever wanted…it was not money I wanted to keep.   So I gave away over half of it…to struggling family members…to friends who needed a boost to help them along their way…to a church that has faithfully cared for us through the years and to the college ministry in South Africa that had blessed me so richly several summers ago

    Today I sat with men and women who are nearing the end of their lives. They were happy men and women… They joined me and my friends singing Christmas songs and Christmas carols. It could have been my imagination…but the seemed especially engaged in the songs about Jesus… The songs about the “real” meaning of Christmas. The smiled cute smiles during the Santa songs… But they closed their eyes as if in reflection as we sang of the baby in the manger, And the angels heralding the good news.   They sang with great joy to their world…and I got to see it and hear it. And they seemed lost in a silent night of their own as we softly joined them in the hymn. It’s easy to get caught up in the commercialization of Christmas… In Santa and his elves (especially with little ones who “get it” this year for the first time). It’s easy to be disappointed because I can’t give everyone I love everything they want. But today I gave someone something they wanted… At

(I wrote this blog three weeks ago after we were back in Durban from our safari at Kruger Park...before I could post it my computer got a virus (sigh...first time in 20 years to get a computer virus).  I wanted to "wrap up" our trip, and this seems to do a good job, so I'm going to go ahead and post it with an apology for the delay. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Romans 1:20   “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.” I stared at the stars this morning as we left the house shortly after 5:00 a.m.   Their brightness was incredible…it seemed I could reach out and touch them.   As a very chilly wind blew around us in our open-air vehicle, I watched the sun rise over the eastern side of South Africa.   I had a Monday like I’d never had in my life.   I don’t often see birds t

  How do I write about an automobile accident in which two cars are destroyed, but their six passengers all walk away?   Do I write about the decisions of the day that put us in that moment where the two cars met?   I chose to look for sunglasses after we stopped for lunch…delaying our leaving by about five minutes.   If I’d not bought the sunglasses, we would not have been in that place at that time.   We had a GPS with us and we made a wrong turn, but we had the sound down and didn’t hear her say “Recalculating”…a warning that we’d done something wrong.   So we missed a turn just ten short minutes before that moment…a turn that would have kept us from being in that place at that time.   But maybe the strangest decision is that we drove into a wildfire!    We saw it…we recognized that it was bigger than most of the fires we usually see here alongside the road.   I knew it was different enough that I actually photographed our approach, taking three pictures before we entered th

  Dan and I have been blessed to spend our last full week in South Africa getting to “explore” some of the sights that true tourists come to see. What a blessing to spend the best part of the day Monday with a large portion of the staff of DBC on a “fun day” excursion to uShaka Sea World.   Many years ago a tanker became grounded on the shores of the Indian Ocean in downtown Durban.   The tanker sat and rusted until someone saw potential in the ruins.   It still amazes me that folks are able to turn trash into treasure, and they hit the jackpot with this “garbage”.   The ship itself has been turned into a beautiful aquarium, housing all kinds of saltwater sea life.   We enjoyed seeing a variety that included gold fish, blue fish, yellow fish, pink fish, green fish, rainbow colored fish, striped fish, sharks, stingrays, turtles…and that was just a small part.   There were tanks filled with seahorses, crabs, little wormy looking things that stuck up out of the dirt, a chameleon

Yesterday began with a LONG ride to church … 120+ kilometers…approximately 75 miles. We left at 8:00 in the morning for 9:30 worship. And I thought my ride to Sawyer for 30 minutes was a long ride –grin. It was a humid day and the sun was low enough that the humidity interfered with the beautiful vistas…but it didn’t keep us from enjoying the rolling agricultural lands where we saw fields and fields of sugarcane. It’s amazing how the city ends and the rural area begins with just a hill or two separating them. The homes in the rural areas of Africa are not pretty. They are a picture of the extreme poverty that the African people lived in under apartheid. Changing laws does not change economies for those who have nothing. Homes are pieced together with found things…a sheet of drywall…a piece of tin…leftover material…mud…anything that will fill a hole to keep the wind out of the inside of the building. Many of the “better” homes are cinderblock homes. Through the eyes of an Americ