Green Pastures

As one can well imagine there are certain words that don’t first come to mind when one thinks about living in the desert. Words like lush, verdant, green pastures, grass. Ones assessment of the aesthetic of desert living would be almost entirely correct, almost.

When driving through the city one will find small oases of green, perhaps they seem so green because they are set against the backdrop of jaggared mountains or dusty plains of nothingness, I am not sure but these bursts of green are a welcome softening to the landscape. Usually these lawns are accompanied by beautifully landscaped gardens that have been tended to with meticulous care by their keepers. On my drive back from Sifah in the afternoon when I’ve been teaching and driving for eight hours the sudden rush of pink, purple and red spurs me on to complete my journey. I shudder to think how much water it costs to keep these gardens maintained but their psychological worth is immeasurable.  

Before I share my latest observations with you its important to remember one thing about these gardens and grassy verges, they are not huge and I would like to reiterate that they are gardens. The ones I obviously have noticed are the ones next to the highway, they are just short green patches of vegetation stuck between the highway and other roads, they were created, I would imagine, for entirely aesthetic reasons.

We all know how men of any age love a patch of land and a ball of some sort – any ball really, a rugby ball, a soccer ball, a cricket ball, a kak plastic one that starts to droop after its first taste of battle. I have even driven past Indian men playing a game of cricket in the midday sun in an abandoned parking lot. Men will stop at nothing to run around aimlessly for an hour or two with a ball to satisfy their primal instinct to maim and win, they can’t help it, it’s genetic. Most of the soccer fields here are dusty bits of unused land with wooden poles erected opposite each other. I like to think the lack of grassy fields is why rugby isn’t a popular sport in this country. Obviously the first prize in any ball game is for it to be played on a verdant field but in this country that is a luxury many have never experienced. There are, however, the sneaky ones, the ones who make full use of the grassy patches beside the highway. Again it is important to remember here that these are gardens. It delights me to no end when I pass a group of boys playing soccer in said gardens. Not only must one avoid the other players but a great deal of time is spent dodging palm trees, flower beds and the odd hedge. It’s like obstacle course soccer. Now, there is a particular patch of garden that I am especially interested in. It’s a patch of garden on my way to work which flanks the highway and an off ramp. On this little grassy patch of heaven another kind of sporting battle is taking place and I watch it take place every morning and every evening. It’s the battle between the gardeners and the soccer vandals.

Every morning a group of dedicated gardeners are dropped off with their implements of the day to tend lovingly to our little battleground. Theirs should be the victory because this is, after all, a garden. They have a high standard of garden to maintain – the grass has to be a perfect sea of green and the flower beds need to buzz with the colour of electric flora. All morning they toil in the sun until their garden represents who they are – hard working gardeners who are making small stretches of land into veritable bits of heaven despite the sweltering odds stacked against them. And so when their time comes to leave they wipe their brows and proudly leave their artwork for the day.

As the sun begins to set on our beautifully manicured garden another team arrives. Starved of activity all day due to jobs and the searing heat now is a time for them to practice their art, the art of football. Thanks to the freshly irrigated lawns the scene is set for an epic evening game of soccer, the adrenalin equals that of gladiator proportions, for an hour in their day they will take no prisoners. They run, they slide, they dodge and they score; their shoes quickly ploughing up bits of turf and the odd bloom. By the end of the evening the garden has turned into a mangled pitch, one soaked in sweat, muscle power and victory.

Our gardeners are back the next morning; there is a stoop in their shoulders, a tale of loss in their postures. They set to righting the damage that has been done to their artwork, patiently and carefully they patch up the losses, things that took a minute to destroy now take hours to fix. Their dedication is relentless and after hours of hot sweat in the sun their garden has been mended and their pride re-established, until tomorrow morning.

I cannot help but see this little story about a small patch of garden as a metaphor for so much of what happens in humanity. Just looking at the sheer devastation that has destroyed part of Japan in a matter of minutes, and the resulting carnage that is ensuing, one comes to see how long it’s going to take to patch up the grass and make the flowers grow again.

But there is also something deeper than this, it is not just acts of nature that destroy that which is beautiful and has meaning in our lives. There are certain small parts of the world that are beloved to many religions, cultures and ethnic groups. People will die in the attempt to either defend or destroy these places, places whose mere names inspire in people a response so huge that it’s safer not to say them. Why is this so? Does the belief in a greater power have to be intrinsically linked to a remarkably small piece of land? I don’t know the answer, I do know that when a bogus land claim was put on our farm (when we have lived on the farm for well over 150 years) I was ready to fight, maim and kill for the landscape that holds so many precious memories for both myself and my forefathers. An innate sense of land ownership and the memories attached to land is both a frightening and powerful way in which man has evolved.

But our metaphor goes deeper than that still. How many times do we sow gardens in our souls that we hope will have some worth to others only to have someone, in a matter of seconds, spray the entire garden with deadly chemicals. In a few short moments our blooms begin to fade and the grass turns yellow and we wonder if we will have enough energy to get up tomorrow morning to face the destruction and carry on. All it takes is a sentence, a few ill chosen words, a small vial of verbal poison. Very often people don’t even realise the damage they are wrecking, their soccer boots dig into our most green and beloved places, tearing them apart and yet all they focus on is their own personal victory. I know I’ve done this, I probably do it everyday, we all do it on a daily basis because we want to win our game without thinking of the aftermath and that ultimately someone else will have to clean up the mess. So this week I’m going to try and tread lightly on other peoples gardens, I’m going to try and admire the hard work they have put into them rather than try and steal some of their flowers for myself. Even more importantly I am going to try and share that which I have to offer to others in spite of what they might do to me, despite the damage such vulnerability can often illicit. In revealing the tenderest parts of oneself to others we reflect the nature of Jesus to others.

 God writes the gospel not in the Bible alone, but on trees and flowers and clouds and stars.  ~Martin Luther

Where There Is Smoke

One of the most traumatic events in my life happened when I was in my early teens. Every farmer (and his daughter) in Winterton know what a dangerous month August can be. It is a time when the grass becomes an ocean of swirling tinder, it has long lost is beautiful green hue of spring and the sun of summer has milked its stalks dry of moisture. By the time winter comes the landscape has become a bitter mass of grass, khaki bos and dead morning glory – it is a matted tapestry of untamed flora.

This dead terrain coupled with the unruly winds of August means high fire alert. Water tankers are filled, firefighting beaters are dragged out of farm sheds and the forestry sentinels are sent to their far off fortresses in the mountains to keep watch. It is a time of vigilance where a late night phone call from a neighbor results in hurriedly dressed farmers and their laborers disappearing into the night, following the ominous red glow. 

I have been witness to many a fire and have helped where I can, often assisting my dad in burning fire breaks across our farm in the hope of preventing fires from spreading. One year my dad had not got round to burning a fire break around our house and as murphy’s law would have it a petrifying fire swept along the landscape of our farm and began its descent down the valley towards our house. My sister and I were quickly taken to my aunt and uncle’s house down the road as it was not threatened. My mother then returned home with my older cousin and his friends to quickly pack up the valuables in our house before the fire hit. I remember standing on the balcony with Sarah, my sister, as we watched as the smoke from the fire began to engulf our home. The frightening thing about fire is the smoke, it plays a deadly game of camouflage and one is never quite sure what the fire beneath it is doing. We were hysterical, we could not see what was going on and our hearts lurched every time Steve Bolt and his airplane would swoop down into the smoke and fire to bomb the flames with water.

I was beside myself. We did not know whether our house had caught fire or if our parents were safe and all we could do was stand hopelessly by and watch. It was in that moment of panic and uncertainty that I realized that I am not the kind of person who can sit silently beside an unfolding tragedy and hope that the people in the situation are doing everything they can, I have to be one of the doers too.

Luckily by the grace of God and the grace of Steve Bolt’s amazing pyrotechnical abilities with his plane our house was saved and my parents were fine. It was after this incident that I told my mom that in any future events where the line is drawn between the people who flee and the people who stay I absolutely had to be in the party who stayed. I believe that keeping oneself in a state of ignorance will only make ones fall into reality all the more painful when one does finally fall. And everyone falls.

And so history repeated itself several years later with a fire a hundred times more powerful, with gale force winds where one could barely stand up properly and with a trail of devastation that left the entire Winterton area being declared a national disaster zone. One of the worst hit areas was our farm. Given the severity of the fire it was a promise made to her daughter many years before that allowed my mom to give me permission to go off with my dad onto the farm to try and prepare for the two runaway fires that were both headed directly to our farm. We tried to get the pivots going to get some moisture pumping out over the lands but the electricity wires were already burnt. We then tried to get our cattle to safety but people living on our farm had already illegally padlocked their cattle into the only place of safety on our farm – the stone kraal, an act which was very difficult to forgive. Our attempts were futile, I can still see what, for me, was an image of hell – neighbors running with new born calves trying to find places of safety for them; my elderly grandfather, walking stick in hand trying to fight his way through the wind shouting inane orders to no one; our horses galloping alongside a fence silhouetted against a wall of fire rapidly moving its way up from the river to the farmyard; cattle running to and fro, panicked and frightened; an old black woman collapsed in the dirt, screaming, her house had burnt down and she couldn’t find her grandchildren; a blind dog unable to find its way, stumbling and anxious, desperately trying to sniff its way through smoke and dust. It was only at the last minute that my mom came careering into the farm yard with all our beloved possessions in the car, including our dogs, that I finally gave up the fight and got into the car to follow my grandparents out of the carnage as the fire began its gluttonous eating of our farm and its animals.

We lost almost everything - infrastructure, buildings, machinery, animals. But there were miracles too, big miracles. And I would like to keep these miracle stories until my next entry. The point of my current story, however, was the fact that I could say I had done all I could, I did not run away. When the chips were down I saw the nightmare through and it made me a stronger person. We were also not the only people with severe loses, people died, a baby burnt to death on its mother’s back as she was fleeing the fire. People lost their homes and their livelihoods, they lost everything. It was the most devastating thing to ever happen to our little community. It was also the most amazing.

A day after the fire lorry loads of fodder from farmers in the Midlands started to arrive when they heard that thousands of cattle no longer had food, truck loads of clothing, food, blankets and toys arrived. The Winterton Farmers Hall was inundated with aid. Bear in mind that none of this came from the government, this came from people, human beings. I was helping out at the Farmers Hall one morning and a dry cleaner and his wife from Ladysmith arrived with an entire truck load of some of the most beautiful coats I have ever seen, they were coats that had never been collected and they had prayed about it and had decided to donate them all to the families in the township who had lost everything in the fire. Some families were ultimately better off after the fire than they were before. There are so many stories that still get told about this fire, they are of courage, of selflessness and of hope; of the indestructibility of a community in the light of tragedy and adversity. I consider this fire and its aftermath to be one of the most incredible experiences I have ever had.

Sometimes helping in a tragedy takes on a different form, sometimes there is actually nothing one can physically do but help in going through the motions. Sometimes all one can do is offer prayer, or a shoulder to cry on, a sympathetic ear or a cup of tea. I have had times in my life when the threat isn’t a great wall of fire; it has been an illness, or a depression or the loss of someone special. The damage has been emotional rather than physical. It has only been through the prayers of others that I have survived these things, of this I am sure. God connects us all, our prayers to Him on behalf of others shoot across the universe with a power far greater then we can imagine. Being spiritually connected through God is what defines me as a human being. Ironically I think it’s what defines all human beings (even atheists) – in feeling empathy for other human beings and in taking on their pain as our own we are learning to be Christlike.

A tragedy has hit Japan. A huge one. One that is almost too terrible to comprehend. An earthquake, a tsunami and a nuclear crisis. All in one week. We watch the news in stunned silence. Beyond the destruction on a scale that is almost too big to imagine emerges small miracles, dignity, compassion and spirit. We see a country that is stoic, broken and brave and we are inspired. We cannot do anything, we cannot fight their fires for them, we cannot offer them a cup of tea but we can pray from them and learn from the dignity with which they are facing this crisis. We learn so much through adversity and it is our responsibility as human beings not to let the courage of our fellow human beings go unnoticed, even if it makes us feel uncomfortable and sometimes extremely sad. Remember – we must love our neighbors as we do ourselves and part of that love comes with an acknowledgement of, and empathy, for the pain that others are experiencing.

Rhythm and Repetition

Since teaching in Joburg I have developed a tremendous interest in what happened to the faith of the world pre-Jesus. As a result today I decided to do a slow meander through the Old Testament, so slow in fact, that I’m only on chapter two of Genesis.

Before I comment on my findings I would like to lay down a few principles of communication and history- making that I learnt about and subsequently lectured at UCT. This may be old hat for some but has given me a completely new perspective on things in relation to the Bible.

Prior to the invention of the alphabet and literacy human beings had no concrete form of storing information and history, everything we knew or remembered was documented through the system of orality. We told stories. There are still many cultures in the world today that practice a form of remembering through storytelling. If lessons were to be learnt we told them through fables with morals. Even Jesus taught important philosophies through parables. They were suited to his audience as they were culturally and socially appropriate to that particular society at that particular time. Today when we learn about Jesus’ teachings we have to translate the social milieu of the time into something that is socially applicable to us. Take ‘The Good Samaritan’ as an example. I suppose in contemporary society we could translate the fable into ‘The Good Tsotsi’. Basically it was about a guy who wouldn’t normally be seen as someone who would go the extra mile for someone but does so despite ones initial judgement of him. We would not know this, however, if the concept of a Samaritan was not translated into the way we perceive things. It’s all about context.

The next important thing about orality is the structure with which stories are learnt. The only reason why I remember ‘The Three Little Pigs’ is because there are hairs on a chinny chin chin and a lot of huffing and puffing. (Sounds like laser hair removal if you ask me). In the same way we remember Little Red Riding Hood and her wolf because there’s a lot of ‘my what big...you have’. (I think a man wrote this story). The stories we remember best are the ones with rhythm and repetition. Reading a bed time story is easy – one gets into the rhythm of it, even if it’s the first time we read it we come to know what’s coming next as a result of the rhythm of the story. So too does repetition spur the story on and it also makes the story that much more difficult to forget.

Traditional Zulu story telling takes rhythm and repetition to the next level. Listening to a Zulu story is like having the 3D version of the storytelling world. The story becomes an auditory treat where the words echo the noises they make and the soundscape for an entire world becomes accessible through the words that describe it.   

Obviously this form of historical documentation, as entertaining as it is, has some serious flaws. Much like an elongated form of broken down telephones one cannot fully rely on all the facts being correct. To illustrate my point - I recently read Max Du Preez’s ‘Of Warriors, Lovers and Prophets’. In it is a story about Shaka Zulu. What Du Preez does is he combines the popular hero folklore with historical evidence from Shaka’s time. The emerging figure of Shaka comes to be somewhat more complex than the statue of him that once stood (briefly) at King Shaka Airport. We see an abused child, teased about his small penis who then later would take baths in front of everyone to prove his manhood, a man who did not produce an heir, was obsessed with his mother and who surrounded himself with strong young men. Interesting how these facts are somewhat glossed over by overzealous Zulus. We all choose to do this, in remembering someone we choose not to remember the bad, I think it’s quite an endearing human quality – it doesn’t however, bode well for the history books.

At this point you may be asking what this has to do with my reading of Genesis chapter one. I have for a long time (with many other people) suspected that the creation story doesn’t really match up. I have absolutely no doubt that God could create the entire universe in a week. It’s almost a comforting thought – He took a week to create the universe and He took nine months to make me, flip I’m special. Fossils, however, don’t lie. Human beings lie but the bones of human beings don’t.

I do believe in evolution, its very hard not to and although some Christians think it is blasphemy to not believe every literal inch of the Bible I think we need to start seeing things from a different perspective. Imagine trying to explain how to use a cell phone to your great great grandmother. Impossible. Her concept of technology would be limited to fixing a butter churn. Heck it’s been hard enough to get my Dad to appreciate the use of the computer, and that is limited to internet banking (as long as my Mom logs on and gets it onto the right page). Our brains are constantly evolving; we are becoming increasingly more capable of assimilating and accepting new knowledge. So with this in mind can we try and think of a way to explain evolution to a nomadic tribe in Israel a couple of thousands of years ago? Tricky isn’t it? I think we would lose them at ‘amoeba’. So what does God do, just as His son would do a couple of thousand years later? He turns His tremendous creation story that happened over millennia into a seven day affair because that was all that the people at that time could understand.

My Mom told me when I was little that babies were made when two people hold each other very closely and a seed of love is planted. Years later when I discovered the nasty truth I was so grateful to my Mom, to this day my vision of sex is not skewed by some weird biological happening, I understand why sex was created and this is because I learnt about it at the appropriate time and in the appropriate frame of mind.. God, like my Mom, is a parent, The Ultimate Parent. He will not burden us with things that we are incapable of understanding or dealing with.

I think Jesus is an excellent example of this. His teachings were revolutionary in his time – he said we should love everybody. A fairly simple philosophy for us now but in the days when Jews, gentiles and various sundry groupings were fixated on a tribal philosophy that extended religion only to those with a genetic birthright to that religion one can see how radical Jesus’ teachings were. God used the example of Jesus to evolve our thinking about Him, perhaps some of us weren’t ready for this, we felt safer in the archaic traditions and practices of our past, but for those who saw the gift of Jesus’ life for what it was it meant we were finally free from the burden of having to conduct a relationship with God that had long lost its potency. Jesus revealed our God who is alive and hip, who is found in the beating heart and not in some old ancient law written by people thousands of years ago.               

So what, you may ask, does this have to do with rhythm and repetition? Have a look at Genesis chapter one, you will notice an interesting pattern – after each day of creation something to this effect will be said – ‘And there was evening, and there was morning – the first day...And there was evening, and there was morning – the second day.’ And so on. There is also a lot of ‘And God said’. Seven times to be exact. Quite a lot of rhythm and repetition here, smells dangerously like a story from the oral tradition. When one asks a child to recount their day to you one gets a lot of ‘and then....and then...and then.’ It helps us to remember things, it establishes a rhythm for us to follow. Why can’t this be the same for the creation story? Could it not be that the story was condensed into a bite size page of the Bible in order for a particular society, at a particular time in history to be able, with the limited scientific capacities they had, to understand our God, a God whose works are to this day beyond human comprehension.

Then of course we have the whole apple debate. Do human beings really think that the ultimate downward spiral of the human race was caused by a fruit, and that it was the woman’s fault? Yes, one may argue that the serpent tempted Adam away from the path of God by way of Eve but I’m not sure I’m entirely confident about this one. Ultimately human kind needed a simple story to explain why we have allowed ourselves to be tempted into committing acts of evil which have resulted in the creation of the world that we currently live in and what better way for man to control women than to blame everything on her? God created a heavenly world for us, a world where humans respected nature, where man and woman had a relationship of mutual dependence and respect and where sin did not exist. (Here in your mind I would like you to have a flash back to the bushman family pre-coke bottle arrival in the delightful flick, ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’). We can still live as God intended us to live, our bad choices as a species, however, have made it increasingly difficult for us to do this. Lets be honest, almost every thing man has ever invented has come to be used as a weapon of man’s destruction. God gave us the choice – we could choose to eat the fruit, to evolve, to gain knowledge but He knew that it would ultimately lead to our own destruction. The more we evolve the further away from God we drift.

So there it is – my own theory of evolution and creation with a bit of storytelling thrown in. If you have managed to get this far in my long diatribe I thank you, its been one of those stewing for a while and today I feel I got affirmation that my hypothesis is correct – sometimes God uses stories to explain things that are greater than our minds have capacity to understand and sometimes human beings create stories to try and understand the greatness of God. As human beings become increasingly more scientific, rational and inventive it is a pity that we do not allow our imagination, wonder and awe of God’s greatness to develop too. If we could learn to celebrate God’s creation and the many human beings who form a part of it surely we would be able to then find our way back to the garden?

     

Anybody? No? Dust?

When I arrived in my flat my employer had very kindly put all the essentials in, including linen for the bed. I love my bed, it’s king size, has special coil things in the mattress (the word ‘coil’ generally reminds me of faeces though, not ideal) and it looks like a big ship. What I didn’t, however, relish was the fact that the sheet I had been given was queen size. For the last month or so I have been waking up like the victim of a bondage/strangulation experiment gone wrong. There is nothing worse than ill fitting linen. Anyone who knows me well knows that I am obsessed with beds, they must have been made properly; I am almost phobic of unmade beds. I have had to grit my teeth and ‘drape’ my sheet over the bed and try not to wriggle too much during the night; it’s been hell I tell you.

I got paid two days ago. Most people buy food and other necessary items on pay day, I went straight to the linen shop. The linen in this country is absolutely beautiful – everything is pure cotton, even the ‘cheap skate’ stuff. I bought a pristine white (400 thread count) cotton duvet with accompanying fitted sheet and pillow cases. I also got a beautiful red and orange throw. Now when I look into my room, stealthily when no one is looking, my bed looks like a sunrise. Beautiful, fresh and warm. It’s the small things in life.

As I gaze out of my window while I write ahead of me is the ‘hair dressing and beauty saloon’ which can be found on the ‘first flower’ and next to the saloon is an open lot with some garbage skips (which is where I have to shlep my rubbish everyday). Beyond the vacant lot is the highway and beyond that the sea (I can’t actually see the sea). I have enjoyed watching waddi dogs (the name for aboriginal Omani dogs) loitering around the garbage skip, finding a living. I like the vacant lot, it has a spacious feel about it.  A day ago a menacing little cordoned off area appeared in my vacant lot. It is worryingly about the same size as a building.  The thought of having a building site as my neighbour in the foreseeable future fills me with terror – have I mentioned the dust?

Precipitation and Speedos

Yesterday a small miracle happened as I was setting forth for my biweekly trip into the desert, it started raining. Yes, you may argue that ‘rain’ may be a strong word to use in this case, perhaps ‘a slight show of precipitation’ would be more accurate but when one is living in the desert rain is rain. Sometimes when I’m walking along the streets of Muscat I wish for a deluge of water.

  So having finally crawled my way out of the city I made my way out to Sifah beach to the Lupp construction site. Again, I feel a bit of background history is required for my next anecdote. Flesh is a rare commodity in these parts. Naked skin is akin to white gold. It’s got to the point where I almost feel naughty wearing a strappy top in my flat. Both men and women cover every inch of themselves and the longer one lives in this society the more accustomed one becomes to this particular aesthetic. Sifah is remote, other than a handful of German engineers etc there are no people living there other than the locals. One can then imagine my surprise when driving along the coastline to have a near naked person amble onto the dirt road. A near naked German person, wearing hot pants. A very unattractive near naked German person wearing hot pants and sandals. The sight was just too much for me, to see that much white wobbly flesh squeezed into the most disgusting speedo was terrifying. We are not talking Daniel Craig here,

Think more along these lines...

Apparently the German man is a relative of one of the engineers. He continued to walk around the site in his toit pant for the rest of the day. This story really shows how everything is relative. In South Africa this would be a completely common sight, bare breasted women are a common sight, but here flesh has been made into something else, something sordid and disrespectful. I am almost angry at myself that I had the kind of reaction I had, I like to think that if I saw a German in hot pants in South Africa my reaction would have been the same, I hope so, I would hate to be turning into a prude.

Obedience Not Sacrifice

Although I have had wonderful feedback from people reading my blog because it’s a bit funny and at times sarcastic today I had a sudden realisation that I am not actually writing why I am currently ‘Em of Arabia’. You may have noticed the odd Bible verse at the bottom of each blog entry but I feel I am doing an injustice to God by restricting an indication as to His presence in my life to a mere after thought at the bottom of some pretty meaningless rambling about the desert and goats.

I came to Oman because God told me to come here. I knew no-one, knew nothing (and still know more or less nothing) about this country and I came here to teach English – a subject which I’m not particularly fond of.

Never in my life have I had to surrender all my bunny holes (my places of safety). I had to leave my Stephen, my Mom and my Dad, Tom and Bell and all the things which provide me with a sense of comfort, safety and routine. I have had to become spiritually naked, stripped of all my excuses and day dreams and expectations. I have had to learn to live every day by the grace of God. He only promises grace enough for a day and boy oh boy has that been a difficult lesson to learn. I have literally had days where every single minute was prayed through with God because I did not know how I would survive them otherwise. His amazing grace has seen me through some very dark times and not once have I felt the stifling grip of panic around my throat.

I have always avoided labelling myself as a Christian. I feel that the religion has got too many bad connotations associated with it, too many people sitting in the comfort of their homes, calling themselves Christian and doing nothing about their supposed call to faith.  I now understand the challenge of faith, I understand the daily struggle it is to keep God at the centre of my world when everything is foreign and scary.

I never really understood the concept of spiritual battle, of overcoming fear, anxiety and doubt. When Christianity is an accepted way of life rather than a way of being people take for granted the principles that Jesus taught. I am now proud to say that I hunger for His word, believing in Christ extends beyond merely living a Christian lifestyle.

I came here to make peace with my future but I am actually making peace with my past as well. The only expectation we can ever have of God is the faith that He will see us through tomorrow if we listen to Him and follow His promptings. I have spent far too many days trying to work out who, what, where, when and how I will be in my future without simply allowing God to be with me in my present.

Oddly enough I’m doing a bit of an eat, pray, love. In my case I’ve had to stop eating, using food to fill the space where God should be is what causes obesity. Don’t worry, I’m not starving myself but I have learnt that food is not a way through which one should punctuate ones day. And so now I pray, and I am by no means a flawless believer, but I know that I cannot ultimately love anyone else sufficiently if I do not love God first. I suppose its a bit like being a parent to a child – one has to love ones spouse first before one can begin to hope that one’s child will turn out well. The example I set through my relationship with God is one which I hope will then come to reflect in my relationships with others.

All of us have our obedience tested by God, and remember He wants ‘obedience not sacrifice’. Because I’m a fairly literal girl God decided to go old school in His test of my obedience – He sent me to the desert, like He did to Moses and Elijah and Jesus and countless others. I now know how marvellous it must have been for Jesus when Mary Magdalene washed His feet after a dusty day. I now know that the desert will test everything one believes in but its emptiness is also the place where God’s voice resonates best.

I feel I am at the beginning of a long journey where I truly seek to discover God’s will in my life. If we do what God wants us to do then it will be impossible to sink into despair – yes, sometimes God asks us to do things that we are sure are beyond our capabilities, stamina and faith, but when we do things with God’s power our potential is limitless. I would like to end with an image that has helped me to keep believing when things seemed too much...

My cousin Sam’s memorial was one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. To lose someone who had such tremendous promise was a true tragedy. Her mom, Martine, was literally with Sam every minute of everyday and she no doubt aches for her daughter even in her deepest sleep. Martine was barely able to stand at the memorial and we all marvelled at her courage to see the entire service through, such is her grief. I remember looking up at Martine at one point of the service when we were singing one of Sam’s favourite songs – a mother who had lost everything, literally everything – was standing before God with her arms raised in praise of Him. If God can inspire praise in the darkest time in someone’s life imagine what He can do with light.