Service times

In 2019, I was away from home doing my national service. This meant uniforms, soldiers, community service and voluntary work away from the big city life that I knew. The environment was new, the culture shock was constant but the lessons I learned were profound.

Over the course of the year, I wrote short ‘postcards’ to my friends and family back home. I would really love to share some with you too.

Worries

This service is not sweeting this body. Only if my body had been more aware of what my mouth was saying when it agreed to go so far away from home, perhaps it would have clamped my lips shut.

This body is worried about whether or not it will survive this year. And what happens after? Where do I go? Should I stay here, move back home or somewhere else? Will I ever marry? If I do, who would it be? If I don’t, would family leave me in peace?

Through it all, I hear a resounding, “Seek first the kingdom of God”. Fair enough; but why is the kingdom so hard? Why is there so much sweat and struggle? In fact, why does it demand my entire life?

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

Matthew 6:34 (MSG)

I’m smelling of anger

The strangest smell has been coming from my clothes.

My dirty laundry doesn’t smell like me anymore. It stinks of public transport and being squeezed between sweaty people. Plus I have had to swap Persil for Boom to wash my clothes – not exactly the same result.

There is another new stench I have noticed as I brush against those I’m serving with and people at work. Some of it is picked up from others, but I transmit the worse tones of the odour. This smell has probably been here all along; I just never noticed it.

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent, and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you.

James 1:19-21

Text messages for a lonely heart

There’s always a pulse of excitement in me when I hear my un-smartphone go ‘beep-beep’.

Sometimes I rush for the phone, other times I pose for it and continue what I’m doing, all the while wondering what the message is about and who has remembered me back home. Then I pick it up and 95% of the time it’s from my mobile network. Sigh.

Yet one sender whose messages are persistent and never fail to excite is God. I see his texts in the starry village sky, the orange trees, the cockerel’s feathers and that beautiful moth with a very long tail.

No matter how far away or lonely I am feeling, he never fails to send them.

For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Romans 1:20