The Afternoon of Life

  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 stu...

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...

I’ve failed to blog the last ten days because we’ve been so very busy.   Last Friday night’s concert was “my” big project for the trip.   It was an emotional day for me because I had leaned too much on my own abilities and not enough on the work of God…and my abilities fell far short of what I thought was needed for the evening.   I arrived at school to discover that only three students were present.   Thursday had been “Women’s Day” in South Africa…a national holiday and day off from school.   In typical South African tradition, the majority of the students decided that it should be a two-day holiday making for a long weekend.   I had planned on the choir participating in our concert - and now I had no choir.   Only one of the students had talked to me about being away, and I took everyone’s absence personally and felt like a failure.   This was a horrible issue of pride in my heart.   I spent a lot of time alone with God that morning wo...

This has been another interesting week in South Africa…not so much from the action happening around me, as much as from the action happening IN me.   I found myself compelled to take a stand against the world again this week…and once again discovered that many Christians are washing down the Word of God to take away its power to save.   When we decided that Jesus is just so loving that anything goes…when we decide that to emulate Christ we have to just be sweet and kind and loving and accepting of sin because we might actually offend someone…we emasculate ourselves as Christians.   Jesus’ message in His day was bold.   It went totally against the teaching of the world.   It went totally against the teaching of the church of its time.   It was something so different that people stood in wonder for hours to hear Him preach.   Did He love the people?   With all His heart!   But that did NOT stop Him from pointing out that they were fallin...