I’m humming a song as I sort things out: We are moving in the light of God. It’s a traditional song from South Africa and much of the stuff I’m sorting through is connected to my time in South Africa.
I first went in 1984 and the last time was 1994 so my visits span the last decade of Apartheid. I learnt more there than why we didn’t eat South African apples back then. We were witnesses to the end of Apartheid in 1994.
I’ve unearthed photos, art, poetry, fabric, letters, diaries. All moving stuff. Now to decide where to move it to? I’ve given some away: poetry and pictures. What will I write about from all of this. The journey from naive 20 something to mother of a 3 month old daughter, these were some of the most influential years of my life, shaping, molding and changing me. Of course something didn’t change: I was still a white European woman. But there were things that carried me through every day of my ministry. One was Desmond Tutu speaking to the Eloff Commission in the 1980s with words Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome centuries before.
‘Nothing can separate us from the Love of God in Jesus Christ‘.
I have said it at every funeral I have conducted, remembered it and prayed it in many more circumstances on many days.
I am moving in the light of God, and in the love of Jesus Christ.
In our life and our believing
The love of God
JAL 30.01.2019