Life is Hard

A friend used to say to me something she heard, “If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back.” This is so true. When we think we’ve got it bad, we then hear of someone else’s struggles, and realize ours aren’t that bad after all.

Having heard, and even more so, being part of a lot of my spiritual children’s lives has me aware that I have nothing to complain about. Let me introduce you to one of my sons, Gamu. I met him in Zimbabwe when he was 12, and he is now 21. It was a divine encounter that continues to have God’s handprint over it to this day. Gamu was born HIV+. Both his parents passed away in his early years and his grandmother (Gogo) raised him. I featured his story in my book. Below are some excerpts so you get to know some of his story.

“On a few occasions, Gamu would come crying to my house after school, because some bullies had thrown rocks and teased him. I would do my best to console and encourage him, and he would often say, “Life is hard.” As I got to know his grandmother better, she confided that Gamu had failed several grades, due to long bouts of hospitalization. And when he returned to school, his teachers had pretty much given up on him, thinking he was going to die at any time. His grades were low, so every now and then, I would invite him over to my house to practise reading. No matter how often I was available, Gamu always remained upbeat and very grateful for whatever I did for him…

During my visit to Zimbabwe in 2011, he told me he wanted to become an usher at our very large church. He didn’t have the black suit required for the usher training, so we went shopping and I bought him one. It was during this time that Gamu’s HIV/AIDS doctor informed me his body was developing a resistance to the 1st dose of ARV’s, and he had put him on the latest and final regime. If his body rejected this ARV protocol there were no other options. Gamu had not been taking the drugs as prescribed, so I explained to him what the doctor said, and how important it was for him to take his pills regularly. I also reminded him he was, indeed, “a walking miracle,” and God still needed him to help people. As I left his house that day, he said, with tears in his eyes, what I hadn’t heard him say in years, “Life is hard.”

I’ve lost count how many times Gamu has nearly died due to his illness or accidents. I could go on and on with the challenges he’s had throughout his life, and how he has learned to overcome and press on. His attitude reminds me of the incredible migratory behaviours of the salmon fish. Their migration begins from where they were hatched, in the rivers and streams, and as small fish they head to the vast ocean. There they mature and then return to the rivers and streams. The very place they were born is where they breed and hatch their eggs. What is so amazing is how they swim upstream against strong currents, even leaping up waterfalls, in order to return to where they were spawned. Some species migrate thousands of kilometres to get from the ocean to their original birthplace. Once they have reached this spot, they breed, lay their eggs and die within a week, fertilizing the stream and creating a nutrient-rich environment for the salmon eggs to hatch. This persistence is a natural instinct God has placed in the salmon fish. I believe there is a part in all of us that has the potential to rise up and continue on a journey, even against seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

The most recent hardship for Gamu is that his beloved Gogo passed away on March 18^th at the age of 68 (in photo above with Gamu). She was the last of his immediate relatives. I have spoken to him on the phone and he very candidly said, “She finished her race.” He now faces a whole new set of challenges, but as long as Gamu has breath in his body, he will continue running his race, even when “life is hard.”

Keeping Up Appearances (Part 2)

 

I love fast sports cars! Seems peculiar for a 50 year-old lady, but inevitably when driving, I will turn my head to catch a glimpse of a nice-looking sports car. A highlight for me as a child was going with my Dad and two older brothers to the annual car show. Strangely, I remember making a beeline for the station wagons. Perhaps, that was the practical side of my personality coming out. In fact, the first car I owned in my 40’s was a station wagon when living in Zimbabwe! As I get older, I seem to be allowing my more daring side to come out, and for my 50^th Birthday my dream was to drive a sports car. Due to the time constraints of trying to finish my book for my Jubilee last September, I wasn’t able to organize renting one for my Birthday on the 25^th.

This dream wasn’t going to die. I went online and found a company offering a deal on driving a supercar on a racetrack in Cape Town. I went on Saturday. Now, I like the look of a sports car and I like to go fast, but when the instructor said these cars have such and such horsepower that meant nothing to me. I had seen a Lamborghini (the blue one in photo with Lucky) and a Ferrari (the red one) before, and I liked the appearance of them, so my choice was to drive one of those. They said the Ferrari was overheating so they weren’t sure if we could drive it. One of the Lamborghinis had already conked out and too many people were lining up for the second one. I looked around at the other cars. Although they didn’t catch my eye, because I didn’t want to wait for hours, I opted to drive an Audi R8 (the white one). I took Lucky, one of my sons, with me to watch as he loves sports cars and I had to ask him if the Audi was a good choice. He said it was. When I got into the car, I asked the instructor if it was manual or automatic and he replied, “It’s tronic.” Not wanting to appear like a dumb female, I didn’t ask him what he meant. All I could figure out was that the gears were on the steering wheel. Well, it seems I made one of the best choices, as everyone I asked who knew this car said it had one of the most powerful engines. I did go fast, not sure how fast, because I couldn’t take my eyes off the racetrack as it curved in so many places, but fast enough to have my head spinning when I got out of the car after 3 laps!

There is a point to sharing this experience. In many ways, society has trained us to look at people and things from a surface or appearance level. Mine might be in the area of cars; yours might be in the area of houses, or clothes, or the latest technology, or a girl or a guy. Although they may be appealing on the outside, we are often not taking into consideration what they are like on the inside. I wasn’t anticipating that a Ferrari would overheat or a Lamborghini would conk out! To me the Audi R8 didn’t look as appealing as the other two, but it was because I was focussing on the outer appearance and not on the engine or the heart of the car. Sound familiar? I Samuel 16:7b is where God says to Samuel, “For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” This was in reference to Samuel anointing one of the sons of Jesse to be king. Samuel assumed it was Eliab, and God cautioned him to not look at the outer appearance, but rather, at the heart. Seven sons passed by and none of these were God’s choice. The one God had chosen was David to whom He described as a man after His own heart. Although far from perfect, God knew David would ultimately seek His heart and obey Him.

That’s what God is looking for at the end of the day. A heart after His own - compelled and powered by love.  

Keeping Up Appearances (Part 1)

I recently started meeting with a few students on one of the University Campuses in Cape Town using my book as a Bible Study tool. We read a chapter and then use the questions at the end for discussion. The chapter we were discussing was “Cry out, Abba Father.” I suppose us talking about our relationship with God as Father sparked a comment by the young man in our group. He was noting that in prayer a lot of us Christians approach God from a distance. This approach often has us shutting our eyes and bowing our heads. Or it has us shouting, begging, or using fancy words like we were speaking from the King James Bible when talking to God. This is the way he had been taught, but now that he had observed another way to come before God, he questioned his approach.

I shared with him some of my thoughts about the possibilities of why we seem to approach God in certain ways. One of those possibilities is because we are “keeping up appearances.” We seem to want to be seen in a certain light by God and others (when praying in public). Now the thing is, we may impress others, but we can’t impress God. Maybe the reason we think we have to shut our eyes and bow our heads when praying is because we think this is what is required of us. Perhaps, some of our shouting, begging, and using fancy words are because we are hiding the fact that we really don’t know the One to whom we are speaking - we aren’t intimate with Him. I’m not equating intimacy with familiarity, and thus treating God without reverent fear and respect. Throughout my walk with God I’ve approached Him in all the forms mentioned above. I’ve later had to ask myself why I did that, and have come to realize that deep down I was often “keeping up appearances.” I thought I needed to be seen in a certain posture, or speak in a certain way for Him to receive my prayers. Or to appear as a proper Christian by those I was praying with. So many of us do this without even realizing it.

I was reading from Galatians 2 the other day and came across a situation that involved Paul and Peter that I hadn’t noticed before. To give us some background, in Acts 10, Peter is challenged by God to eat the food of the Gentiles, which was considered unclean by the Jews. God wanted the Gentiles to be reached with the good news and He was assigning Peter this task. Peter had a hard time wrapping his head around this one as he had been taught as a Jew not to eat animals that were considered unclean. Three times God spoke to him that what He had cleansed Peter must not call common. In some ways, God was offending Peter’s religious thinking in order to expose his heart. Peter finally relented and agreed to share the good news with the Gentiles, and the gift of the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Gentiles, much to Peter’s and his fellow Jews’ astonishment.

Then we read in Galatians 2 where Paul is confronting Peter over his hypocrisy. Peter had changed his ways and had been regularly eating with the Gentiles and ministering amongst them. However, when a conservative group of Jews came from Jerusalem to observe what was happening, Peter withdrew and separated himself from the Gentiles. Hypocrisy basically means, having a need for people to think more highly of us than we really are. Peter was “keeping up appearances” in front of this group of Jews, wanting to be seen or not seen, in a certain light. Other ministers of the gospel also followed suit. Fear was a motivating factor.

When we know the love of our heavenly Father for us and for others, we don’t need to fear what God thinks about us, or what people think. What Abba Father is desiring to nurture in us is honesty, openness, brokenness and quite simply, being real before Him and others.

The Lost Art of Brokenness (Part 3)

One of my spiritual daughters introduced me to a new word a few months ago – “oxymoron.” Thinking I was clever by knowing literary terms, I quickly realized this young lady, whose 2^nd language is English, had one over on me! I decided to take the humble response and ask her what an “oxymoron” was. She gave me some examples, and then in later conversations, we had fun distinguishing if what we had just said was an oxymoron or not. Here’s one I’ve been meditating on recently in light of brokenness – “walking dead.”

The longer I’m on this journey with Jesus, the more I realize that God is asking us to be the “walking dead” when it comes to our self-life. I know this when I read verses like Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Truly, His life in me is only evident when I am dead to my self.

It’s interesting because I remember another daughter saying in a Bible study that her recent revelation was that Jesus was her role model. I understood what she was saying as I used to believe that too. However, after years of striving to imitate Him and coming out exhausted and deflated, I had the revelation that I’m not to live my life imitating Him. Trying to be “like” Jesus means I’m taking my life and attempting to fix it up and making it look like Jesus. Whereas, I believe, our old nature dies and His new nature comes to life in us. As shared in a previous post, our spirits are saved at the moment we ask Jesus into our life, but our souls (mind, will and emotions) are being saved. Unfortunately, some of us “die hard!”

Although I wrote the following poem a few years ago, I’ve been coming back to it recently, in light of the brokenness the Lord desires to see transpire in me.

Why are we trying to be someone we’re not when Jesus didn’t use His equality with God for His own benefit?


Why are we trying to be a hero when Jesus made Himself zero?

Why are we trying to gain a title when Jesus gave up His glory?


Why are we trying to maintain our ‘rights’ when Jesus gave up His divine privileges?

Why are we trying to play the part with our suits and ties and shimmery eyes when Jesus had no beauty that would attract us to Him?


Why are we trying to gain and maintain a reputation among men when Jesus made Himself of no reputation?

Why are we trying to be noticed when Jesus was numbered with the transgressors? 


Why are we trying to be served when Jesus took on the humble position of a servant?

Why are we trying to keep up appearances when Jesus took on the appearance of a man and humbled Himself even to the point of death?

May we, as the body of Christ, find anew the Lost Art of Brokenness!