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| Life's journey |
"I had felt life first as a story: and if there is a story, there is a story-teller." G.K. Chesterton.
Every second that goes by, two
babies are born. Each baby’s life is a blank piece of paper when
they breathe their first breath. As that baby grows up, their life is written
onto that blank piece of paper in blank ink. There is no whiteout available to
us, but we can turn from what we did wrong and make amends for what we’ve done, by apologising and asking God to forgive us for what we did. Though we may never forget, God chooses to forget what He has forgiven. As a result a new chapter is written without these wrongs and show instead the
right decisions we have made. Yet, as we live our lives, how our stories take
form, is a testimony to those around us and to those we encounter along the way.
Even though we may encounter negative influences, we have the choice to embrace
these influences or to reject them all together, allowing these influences to
mar us… or to shape us. We can’t always choose what happens to us, but we can choose
how we react to them, we can choose to be a victor instead of a victim!
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| The beauty of a South African sunset |
Sometimes
we believe something but don’t know exactly how to share what we believe with
those around us. I had the same problem. Evangelism was something I really didn’t
enjoy because it involved the possibility, that whoever I was talking to, might
reject me, however, what I realised was that its not my problem if what I say
gets rejected. It’s my job to share. When I was doing my DTS (Discipleship Training School), my passion for
what I believe in grew, and I became more and more bold in sharing my faith
with people. I’ve had numerous occasions when I’ve walked out of a shop having
shared my testimony with someone in that shop. Though there are topics I am
cautious about sharing with people, one of these is my belief on how the world
was created, the way the Bible says the world was created, in six days. This
topic is an area of great discussion and debate. We have all heard of Darwin
and his book, The Origin of Species.
We all know about evolution, its in the text books and taught in our schools. Then… what about creation?
The
Bible writes that in the first few chapters of Genesis (the first book in the
Bible). The heavens, the earth and everything in it were created by the words
that came out of God’s mouth. He spoke everything into being in six days, a
perfect world. Then sin entered into this paradise, and creation fell when the man God made, Adam, and his wife, Eve, disobeyed God’s one instruction, not to eat from one tree in the garden He had
placed them in.
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| The glowing embers of a fire. |
In
the time span of about one thousand, six hundred years, between when Adam and Eve first walked the earth and when the flood took place, a lot
happened. God was greatly troubled by the level of wickedness that man had
fallen to. So He decided to start again and instead of destroying the earth in
fire and brimstone, He flooded it. However, instead of wiping mankind out and
starting again, He provided Noah, a man of righteousness, blameless amongst the
people of his time, with a blueprint of a ship, a giant ship. This ship was
called the Ark. It was through this Ark that God provided a way for Noah and
his wife to escape the coming punishment. Noah and his wife weren’t the only
survivors of this flood; their three sons and their wives were also aboard the
Ark along with a large number of animals. After a year adrift on the
flood waters, the Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, in modern day Turkey.
Creation and a global flood are two controversial issues,
even amongst Christians. So this weekend my father has arranged a number of
meetings, in the schools as well as a number of other places, for a speaker
from Durban to share about Creation and some other topics, like dinosaurs
and giants. We may believe in something but its good to know what others
believe in, isn’t it?