VN October 2021

Vetnuus | Oktober 2021 38 Walking through my front door, as I arrived back from my weekend at Noordhoek, I was struck by a sort of dichotomy. On the one hand, everything still looked the same as it hadon the previousThursdaywhen I had left. The furniture was still exactly the same, the welcome from my dear Emily was as warm and loving as I had been looking forward to. The children bouncing around with joy to have me back, yet at the same time, everything was different. It was as if I was seeing everything around me in full colour for the first time. I was feeling waves of love pouring out over the family. I just wanted to sweep them off the floor and hold them tightly against me. However, I was aware that I should be careful of overwhelming themwith this outpouring of emotion. Dumping my case in the bedroom, Emily made us a cup of tea and invited me to come and sit with her so we could catch up. Dying to tell her all about my weekend, as I clutched a mug of the warm brew with its familiar homely aroma in my hands, I became aware that she had something she wanted to share with me first. A week or two before this Easter I had taken a book out of the library called“The First Easter”. It was a compilation by the author Catherine Marshall of sermon notes written by her husband Peter Marshall, prepared over some time for his Easter services, arranged so that it described the whole of that first Easter as one continuous story. Peter passed away at the age of 48 in America, but his gift of making events come alive in his sermons was related in a biography by his wife, which she called “A Man Called Peter”. Later followed by a movie which was a box-office hit. So on the Saturday past, while I was meeting with a few of the other delegates to our retreat for a time of prayer, I asked the folk to pray for Emily, that the Lord would touch her as well. Sometime during the afternoon, back in Stellenbosch, Emily spotted the book lying next to my side of our bed and picked it up, flicking casually through it. She slowly felt herself being drawn into that fascinating yet violent story, to the extent that she couldn’t put the book down till she had read right through it. In her words, as she read she could smell the dust, kicked up by the crowds and the sweaty bodies which she could feel jostling her as they pushed forward and she could hear their cries of “Crucify, crucify!” and then she could hear the thud of the nails being driven into the naked flesh of arms and legs. It was as if she was right there in the midst of the melee, living it and experiencing it with those people. Her enthusiasm just poured out as she shared this with me, tears glistening in her eyes. On that Tuesday morning, I was eager to get back to our practice, with new vigour and determination. Somehow there seemed a new purpose to my work. Not only should I be looking to treat and heal the animals under my care, but I was slowly becoming aware of a wider and deeper opportunity to reach profound needs. On Thursday evening was our weekly bible-study meeting at the local church I was attending. A few of the folk who had been at the weekend retreat came over from Cape Town to share about our time together. Moira, a chubby Scottish lady with a tartan skirt and a real gift of music brought a sort of hand-held harp and we sang some of the beautiful worship songs we had learned. They then asked me to share my experience. As I sat there reliving the events I had recently experienced the dam burst. Wave upon wave of the pent-up emotion spilt over and ran downmy cheeks. I was so choked up that I couldn’t speak coherently. All I could get out was “It is free, I have discovered that it is free”, saying this over and over. For so long I had believed that I would have to do something or be someone to qualify. But I had had the major revelation during my ‘encounter’ this past weekend that all that God wanted to give me was free. There was and still is nothing I or anyone else could ever do that would make us worthy of receiving the “Gift” of God in His Son Jesus. It is all wrapped up as just that, a gift and all one has to do, like Recollections 49 - A New Life is Added to Mine Ian du Toit Story