The Afternoon of Life

(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 of...

  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 app...

  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...