What's in a cup?

The musings of my mind, I realise, might be folly to some, a pastime that sees no end except to toil in conceptual ideas of reality.  How does one prove something is real other than by its tangible presence, or its everlasting effects?  I have no answers that would satisfy the greatest intellect.  Instead I attempt rather to uplift my mind with thoughts of walking on a narrow path holding hands with Jesus, and like His bride, look up to Him with utmost respect and childlike faith that our love will pull us through to the end, where our Father stands and waits to open up His heavenly doors.   I see on either side a forest brimming with lush green trees and singing birds, perched on the sturdy branches.  I smell roses and lavender, daffodils and jasmine, as well as all the freshest herbs planted along the way.  I do not know what lies ahead, for I see darkness at my feet, and I walk by faith, in His strength, for He is leading me to the end.  I do not look back nor too far forward, but s...

Have you ever asked yourself a really hard question whose answer you really did not know. Getting to the point of asking that question itself can take years for the simple formulation of a question is not a grammatical obstacle but a spiritual one. The truth hurts. Sometimes that truth hurts the heart which heals in time. At other times the truth hurts your entire life. It puts into question your beliefs. At some point I believe that I will not only ask the questions but have answers to share as well, for life is long in a manner of speaking. It is long enough to learn lessons worth formulating and popularising. Trivia has never been my strength. Wisdom has been my goal, but it is quite a silly goal to have when one considers its lack of measurability. Far more sense make the goals and dreams of sports heros, and yet ambition for such achievements appears not to have been in my make-up. I decided to walk on the path which God had laid out. Robert Frost had written a poem abou...

First case in point: "The point does not concern morality but apathy." (Manning 2000, The Ragamuffin Gospel, p. 110).  Manning makes this conclusion after retelling the parable of the 'crafty steward' who had come to be known as careless with the rich man's possessions.  The rich man no longer wanted his stewardship after hearing such rumors.  He demanded an account of his spending.  The steward looked at his options.  Hard labour and begging were out of the question, and he wanted to ensure he'd be welcomed by people once he'd lost his job.  So, what he did was call all the people who owed his master money, and he demanded less or half of what they owed the rich man.  The rich man did not respond with disdain, but praised the crafty steward instead.   Manning encourages us to imitate his shrewdness.  He is commended also by Jesus because instead of self-pity, he went into action and made the best out of the situation.  He acted resourcefully instead of wo...

How do I describe today other than a typical day in the rat race.  I just felt stressed.  I felt stressed because I can't call from my cell phone anymore, because I had switched off my phone in an attempt to transfer pictures and songs to my computer, and then I couldn't remember the pin number because it had changed while I was in hospital, and I haven't switched it off since.   Then, in an attempt to get the folder in which I stored my Vodacom information of my original number, the cupboard door fell out of the railing and crashed into the lamp beneath, breaking the lampshade, and then I had to apologise to my mom and explain what happened, and then the box in which the folder is was too heavy for me to bring down, so I had to leave it, not even with the reassurance that finding my previous number's pin and puk numbers will solve the problem anyway.  All this drama over a cell phone, phew!  Without communication to the outside world, where would I be?    Got an SMS th...

Hello,  Isaak had a word for my father today, though he did not give it to him because he doesn't know him well enough and he didn't want to freak him out, which I can understand and appreciate.  He said that the Lord loves him very much, and that my father knew the Lord at some stage in his life, but he has forgotten what His voice sounds like.  He has forgotten.   My mother is in a better position, he mentioned.  He says, the Lord has been working.  Since the last time he saw them till now, he has seen something change.  Also, Praise came along today, and she said she would pray for my mother with regards to selling the house, and Praise said she did not feel too much resistance.  It was positive.   Isaak is a missionary who lives in a house of about 16 others.  When I met him 3 or more years ago, he mentioned giving seminars to teach people to be missionaries, and then he called shortly before I was to leave for Korea, so I started the course immediately, only we never finis...

"In essence, there is only one thing God asks of us - that we be men and women of prayer, people who live close to God, people for whom God is everything and for whom God is enough.  That is the root of peace," writes Brennan Manning in The Ragamuffin Gospel .  When I read "God is enough", I realised that I was guilty of not thinking so.  That God is everything to a person is more understandable to me because it reveals a devotion to something so large and powerful, but sometimes my mind wanders beyond God, when God is actually all I need because He is the Provider.  In another passage he writes, "Several times in my ministry people have expressed the fear that self-acceptance will abort the ongoing conversion process and lead to a life of spiritual laziness and moral laxity.  Nothing could be more untrue.  The acceptance of self does not mean to be resigned to the status quo.  On the contrary, the more fully we accept ourselves, the more successfully we begin ...

"Must I not speak what the Lord puts in my mouth?" Balaam answered when Balak rebuked him because Balak had wanted Balaam to curse his enemies, and instead Balaam blessed them. Balak was king of Moab at the time after Moses had led the Israelites out of Egypt, and they were traveling throughout the land in order to get to the Promised land.  When they didn't have permission, the Israelite army fought the occupying countries, and won. When the Israelites approached the plains of Moab, Balak was scared.  The Israelites had defeated the Amorites.  Would they defeat the Moabites too? Balak summonded someone by the name of Balaam to put a curse on the approaching Israelites.   Balaam spoke to God that same night, and God told him not to curse the Israelites.  He then told Balak that God refused to let Balaam go with them to curse the Israelites.   Balak offered him a generous amount of money, but Balaam refused.  He said, "I could not do anything great or small to go beyo...

"How does one hold to high standards of moral purity while at the same time showing grace to those who fail those standards?" - Philip Yancey  When I read this question on p. 260 of The Jesus I Never Knew , in the final chapter entitled The Difference He Makes , he finally hit the nail on the head.  The question I had been asking myself without being able to put it in words was this very question.  My only disappointment was that no answer followed that answered the question to my satisfaction.  What point was brought up was that Jesus was a sinless friend of sinners.   He did not dissociate from sinners.  He did not do what they did, but he remained in their company.  But if you don't do what sinners do, you have nothing in common, and I would imagine they would soon wonder what you are doing among them, what you want from them, and if you want nothing, what you want to sell them.   I find myself guilty of being the morals police more often than I wish, but knowing not h...

Malcolm X was a handsome African American who fought for the freedom of African Americans in the 1960s.  As I watched a documentary broadcast on SABC 3 this evening, I was enamored by his eloquence of speech.  He had something to say, and he never hesitated.  He always had an answer, and his answers made logical sense.  He was so purpose-driven that he never stumbled over his words, or looked left or right to find words.  He was mentally prepared, and his mind was focused on the result - on freedom for the African Americans.   During these times of unrest, there was a lot to fight for.  What I look at now is many youths, of which I don't discount myself, desiring to fight for something, only we have come so far in the human fight for freedom in many spheres that we "have it good", and when something doesn't affect us directly, we don't fight.  But there are undoubtedly hundreds upon thousands upon millions of people who are suffering in one way or another of some ...

After school, I wrote something I titled, An Ordinary Life, which lamented the lack of adventure in my life.  I had it all, a happy family life, an adoring boyfriend, good friends, and good marks at school, not the best, but I was probably considered to be a well-balanced individual.   Tonight, on the movie Hope Floats  featuring recently acclaimed Best Actress Award-winner Sandra Bullock, she describes hers character as "ordinary".  She says to her daughter in one of the scenes that she used to think that she was special, and now she realises that she is simply ordinary, and that's okay.   I think I realised my ordinariness a long time ago, only I have not yet known how to accept it or make it otherwise.  In this particular movie, Sandra Bullock's husband falls in love with another woman.  Sandra Bullock was crowned queen at the High School beauty pageant, and got the "popular" guy, thinking that she was better perhaps than other girls.  She might have been...

It is a cold and stormy night.  Yet I, alone in my room, fear not.  The crickets chirp continuously, as though their sound were the norm and silence something exceptional.  There is nothing to report about my day other than the back-bending work of studying German grammar and vocabulary, relaxing in a bubbly Jacuzzi for half an hour and preparing a Greek salad for dinner.  Living at home is challenging to my preconceived idea of freedom, and of peace, and of acceptance.  Old feelings come up like buried shoes in snow, having been lost only because I took them off in the first place to explore the feeling of snow, only to discover its coldness, and then realizing that enough time had lapsed to cover the shoes completely.  I'd have to wait for the sun to melt the snow, uncover them and wear them once more. Each day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like a day.  As little happens here, a lot transpires.  Like the shedding of a snake's skin in the hot desert sun,...

"Faith does not ...spring from the miracle, but the miracle from faith" - Fyodor Dostoevsky   There are those that prefer to separate Jesus as Teacher from Jesus as Miracle Worker, like Thomas Jefferson, who had a book in which he collected all passages of the Gospels except those containing miracles.  (This leather-bound book can be found in the Smithsonian museum in Washington.)     As a growing child, Philip Yancey, however, experienced miracles as part of his daily Christian life.  They were the norm rather than the exception.  He saw miracles as the "natural complement" to Jesus' teachings (Yancey, 1995: 166).   As an aside, Yancey describes himself as a journalist rather than a theologian.  He says, "In my search for clues I look at the miracles not in systematic categories but rather as individual scenes, impressionistic snapshots from the life of Jesus." I appreciated this comment on his perspective as though I understood for the ...

Philip Yancey's The Jesus I never knew , published for the first time in 1995 by Zondervan Harper Collins in Michigan, received the compliment from Billy Graham, "There is no writer in the evangelical world that I admire and appreciate more."  What this writer's strength appears to be is his no-nonsense, take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards the truth and the pursuit thereof.  He strips away all notions of the Jesus that is merely the lamb and never the lion, or to be more accurate, the man holding the whip and blazoning the marketplace down to rid the temple of moneymakers who had no place to turn something holy into something commercial.  It appears Yancey has rubbed off on me.   Leo Tolstoy, one of the two most famous Russian writers, Dostoevsky being the second, is quoted as having said, "The test of observance of Christ's teachings is our consciousness of our failure to attain an ideal perfection.  The degree to which we draw near this perfection cannot b...

My poor dog is suffering from cancer.  She is not really my dog, but my parents', but when you live with your parents, the dogs become your dogs, just as the food becomes yours.  I felt utter despair for her tonight, stroking her and crying for her, as though she were a young child entering premature death.  She is only seven years old.  Weimaraners don't live longer than ten years, the vet told my parents.  When she stops eating, and when she is in pain, there is no use, he said.  They'd need to put her down.   Bella is a beautiful dog, full of bounce and beauty, and she is a fighter.  There is so much life left in her, and I can't believe this is the end of her line.  Surely there must be something that can be done for dogs with cancer, just like something can be done for humans with cancer.   I prayed for her and anointed her with oil, praying over her in the name of Jesus, as a dear friend once did for our other dog.  Will she come right, Lord?  Will You heal her wo...

I give thanks to my Father in heaven.  He says to thank Him in the good times and the bad.  Not for a moment have I sunk into a depression over the change of plan from Korea to Kroondal.  It is things such as these that do not depress me.  I have come to learn that depression is very much related to a mental state of mind.   People dealing with depression often talk about their feelings as the overarching determining factor of their sadness.  I find depression is often linked with a low sense of self-worth and self-esteem, fears, worries, guilt, and lack.  When I say lack, I refer mostly to a lack of fulfillment, a lack of purpose, or a lack of direction.  Depression is a mindset that is strongly intertwined with a sense of helplessness and hopelessness of one's current situation or circumstance.   So, having suffered a car accident and dealing with the consequences thereof has not led me at all into a state of depression, but a sense of purpose.  After all, it didn't affect my...

I think, so many times in my life I have watched a movie or read a book and missed the point.  Okay, so far I can only think of two, but if I realise now that I missed the point with these two, imagine all the wasted effort on God's part for the others.   Spanglish showed on e-TV tonight, featuring Adam Sandler and Tea Leoni.  The woman that acts as a Spanish maid and can hardly speak English is the quiet person, though passionate, while Tea plays the talkative and loud wife.  Tea's role, Deborah, is so painful that you get to dislike her despite her beauty and her fit body.  Instead the inner fight going on inside the Spanish maid is far greater of an inspiration than the outer battle of the wife.   It became clear to me the righteousness for which she fought by bringing in sobriety when temptations started to ebb.  She fled from any potential sin.  She broke that awkward silence.  She kept things real.  I admired her quietude about which she went about her work, but the forti...

Tonight is my last night in Jutta and Martin Herrmann's home in Rustenburg. I think it is a good thing that I am leaving tomorrow.  I am exhausted.  The last time I worked was on 15 December 2009.  I had a long holiday, and then I needn't work, and then the accident took place.  I haven't been in a working environment for over three months.  Plus I am still weak from the accident.   Jutta offered her little house at the back of theirs to me for R2500.00.  It is quite big, with a kitchen, a bathroom with shower, a spacious living room, and a separate bedroom.  I could save money on accommodation, and Jutta and I would be able to take turns driving to school and back.  I would need a car if I stayed in Rustenburg.  My only concern is living on the same property as someone I work with so that my private life is not completely separate from my working life.   I still have time to decide, but not so much time as pertinent considerations is what I need now.  I realise that living...

I got an SMS today that read, "Your faithfulness has reached God's heart.  Remain faithful.  God will show u grace."   The number was not stored in my phone, so I replied, "Thank you.  Whose number is this?"  I have long given up on trying to phrase a polite way of asking for someone's identity because the fact that their number is not stored on my phone is in itself offensive to whomever sends it, so I've decided to just go on and ask the question.   The response - "Don't tell me you don't know your pastor's number."   "I think you have the wrong number, Nicole," I wrote back, because neither the senior pastor nor the youth pastor of my church would have responded in that manner nor would they have written in English, plus I have their numbers stored and would have identified them immediately.   I haven't heard back since.  But that was not my point.  My point was that when I received the message, I was greatly encour...

Kroondal, 10pm, Jutta Herrmann's home.  Sitting in an orange-painted bedroom, with a modern fan attached to the ceiling, to shoo away mosquitoes.  Had an intense day.  Intense only because I haven't been working for literally months, and now I had to sit in class, take notes, listen, spell words, move about from class to class - with crutches, try understand what the teachers were saying in Afrikaans, and just generally be a stranger in a new place and all that comes with it.   All in all, I am staying.  The school, the director and her family, the teachers, the atmosphere, the children, the work itself, and everything around me is saying, Wonderful!   After school, I swam in the Herrmanns' swimming pool, which tended more towards the icy side of summer, but I must have been in there a good 15 minutes of pure kicking (basically until my legs were sore and I could no longer kick).  And after the swim and being severely licked by Pumba, the puppy Jack Russell, I enjoyed a rea...

I wonder what different spouses do for their loved ones that is something special that they do that their loved ones don't realise, but that perhaps only a stranger can see.  We could learn so much if we could glimpse into the homes of families and see what thoughtful deed each wife or husband has done to make her spouse feel special.   In some homes, the husband makes breakfast, no questions asked.  In another, the mother makes her daughter a cup of coffee to wake her up.  In yet another, the host closes the curtains while the guest is in the shower, and still in another the boyfriend massages his girlfriend's feet after a hard day's work.  There are many gestures we can do to cheer up another person, and sometimes we have habits that are good and appreciated that we can pass onto others, but we don't even realise their significance.   I would like to learn what spouses do, or couples, for each other, because I too want to create good habits that will add a touch of lo...

It is good to have a friend  to bounce the ideas in your head onto a board that resounds like yours where all your thoughts  are similar and therefore sane and where your fears and worries are mirrored and thus tamed It is good to know that you are not alone that you value another just the same and wonder why they are  where you are  and know you are both okay and though your dreams are as yet unrealised there is hope for you both and worth beyond words and you know with certainty that love will find its way and you will be able to laugh one day at moments that related not at all  with your daily concerns and the laughter will make it all okay.  I know someday all will change but glad for every phase treasure memories today and see what God brings our way. 

A song by Natalie Grant: In better hands It's hard to stand on shifting sand It's hard to shine in the shadows of the night You can't be free if you don't reach for Him and you can't love if you don't love yourself But there is hope when my faith runs out cause I'm in better hands now.  CHORUS: It's like the sun is shining when the rain is pouring down It's like my soul is flying though my feet are on the ground So take this heart of mine There's no doubt I'm in better hands now I am strong all because of you  I'm standing on  every mountain that you move  I am changed Yesterday is gone I am safe from this moment on There's no fear when the night comes round I'm in better hands now [CHORUS] It's like the sun is shining when the rain is pouring down It's like my soul is flying though my feet are on the ground It's like the world is silent though I know it isn't true It's like the breath of Jesus is right here in...

Do you believe that people add and subtract to your life,  and on the basis of that you either keep them or let them go? If that is so, then love is conditional.   Do you believe that you choose your friends in such a way that they can become your allies, true witnesses, investors in your ideas,  or else they are not worth their keep? If so, are you a friend to them? Do you believe when something ends, that there is a change,  or do you keep the things you liked in the first place,  and dump the rest along with any commitment? If so, have you really changed?   We have choices to make.  God shows us the way.  We can turn a blind eye, or we can go His way.  What's easiest is usually wrong, and what's right hard.  The one leads us to joy, the other astray. 

I am living with my parents again.  I moved out when I was nineteen years old.  I am thirty-one now.  "If you live under my roof, you live under my rules," my mother will say when there is something I am reluctant to do at the time of her instruction.  It is not as bad as it sounds.   I love my parents.  I don't always understand them, but I see their fragility and their broken-heartedness they'd never admit to.  Living with people takes some getting used to, and it is not easy to live with a sense of restriction.  My mother does not like it when I am on the phone.  She never has, and I guess some things don't change.  She worries about the phone bill, although it is not hers to carry.   My father and I made lunch today.  I really enjoyed making lunch with him.  He took care of the meat (fillet steak), while I made mash potatoes and mushrooms sauteed in butter.  He did not look over my shoulder to check I was doing the right thing.  He just let me do what I though...

1 Corinthians 14. 34 says, "Women should remain silent in the churches.  They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says." (NIV) I have been asked my opinion about this instruction from Paul.  It has stunned me to silence.  I dare not speak.  May God clarify its application in our lives today.

There are many ways to empty a cup.   My great desire is to become a cup that overflows.  The image of an overflowing cup represents to me a cup that is filled with God's Holy Spirit and love, and thus can give of himself.  To have joy for oneself is not as great as sharing joy with others, or having love inside, but not giving it away to others.  So the image of an overflowing cup is very positive in my mind, and a desire of mine.  A broken cup will also have its contents revealed, or shared, as you like, though it brings out what is inside it because it was forced open by circumstance.  And instead of discouraging me, this experience has greatly encouraged me.  I am not bitter or angry for the cracks inside me, for I will be completely whole again, without long-term side effects, in Jesus' name, and this time I will ask the Holy Spirit to fill me to the brim without fear of falling over from the sheer weight of what's inside.   There are also many ways to fill a cup.  It ...