Unto a Lonely Place
01 July 1991


We came to deepen the co-mingling of our selves and God's spirit within us, certain that spiritual strength and moral change will be necessary to a South Africa at peace with itself.

By ALAN CHANNER
The night is brimming with stars above the drylands of the Great Karoo in South Africa. They say there are as many stars in the sky as grains of sand on all the beaches. But if God has scattered the stars over limitless distances, can he also have intentions for the microscopic details of our lives?

Heeding the call to `Go unto a lonely place and rest awhile', we gathered in a Karoo farmhouse: with walls two feet thick and bats in the roof, with haybales for chairs and oil drums for table legs. There, in the lilac twilight, we sang Jabulani, jabulani Africa!' - `Oh Africa, rejoice!'

We came to deepen the co-mingling of our selves and God's spirit within us, certain that spiritual strength and moral change will be necessary to a South Africa at peace with itself. No one felt equipped for the task ahead; and yet, from the enveloping uncertainty, grew a sense that God meets us in our darkest needs, if we relinquish ourselves at the particular altar of his asking. Then the greatest barrier to faith falls away.

In that farmhouse, alone in a vastness of veld and sky, people of different race and background stepped towards a transcending joy at God's limitless intentions for our lives: and convictions were struck that the essence of great solutions lies, now, in us all.


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