Sydwell

I have just met the most amazing young man. His name is Sydwell and he is in a wheel chair.
But wait , let me backtrack slightly and start the story from the beginning.

My mother is the deputy principal at a school called Martie du Plessis in Bloemfontein. Now Martie du Plessis is a school for children with cerebral palsy and other physical handicaps.

A while back my mother told me of this young man in her school. As I said , he is in a wheel chair and only has very limited use of his left hand and his right foot.

He types all his homework on a computer loaned to him by the school, using his right foot and a trackball mouse. Sydwell is in Matric this year and will finish his highschool with an above average mark. But sadly this is where the problems will start.

When Sydwell finishes his Matric this year he will no longer be able to stay in the hostel. He will lose the use of the PC at the school. As bright as he is, it will be financially and physically impossible for him to further his studies.

And this is a very worrying thing to Sydwell. He does not want to go and sit in a shack and be a burden on society. He wants to be able to share his life story. To encourage and motivate other people with disabilities.

And to this end we need to work. With the internet being what it is I believe that there is scope for Sydwell to share his story on the net. I will help him to set up a blog. I am sure that we will be able to find him a PC and a cellphone with internet capability.

Our biggest challenge will be to find some form of accomodation that is wheelchair friendly.
And then if we can find an organization that will support Sydwell and help to give him the opportunity to reach out to other people with disabilities.

Pray for Sydwell. Pray that him and us will find him something to do that will be able to support him and give him a sense of accomplishment.

Pray that God will open doors and use Sydwell in his service.

Some holiday pics

So here we go. Just three pics to show I am on holiday.


The view from the beach house this morning





The waves breaking over the rocks late yesterday afternoon.






Obviously that lifeguard is off duty.

We are on holiday!!

And so eventually we are on holiday.
My wife is still not feeling well after the spider bite , but at least by the grace (and help) of God we are her.

Someone gave us the use of his holiday house in Hibberdene on the South Coast and another friend of mine kindly gave us money for petrol and food.

and so we are here. Thank you Heavenly Father. And thanks to the people who helped us get here.

The weather is nice. The house is lovely.

My son was even in the water today ( in the middle of winter, can you believe it).

Life is Good. And God is great!!

I am still here

Yep, Monday night. 22:48. And I am still here . In Bloem. I just do not have , and didn't manage to earn any money to take my wife on holiday.

So we are still here. At least I did a small studio job over the weekend that should pay tomorrow. That will at least give me money to travel to Sasolburg to fetch my son from his grandparents. And then we will spend a day or to there and come back.

But as things stand now I will have to phone the gentleman who gave us the beach house and tell him that we will not be coming. As it stands we already phoned him yesterday to postpone our arrival till Wednesday.

I feel bad about it as he could have rented it out to someone else over this time.

I so believed that we will be able to go on holiday........

Ah well , I guess money is like sex. it ain't important until you are not getting any.



maybe I should rename this blog to: the always cynical opinions of .......

i should probably just stop typing now , as I am just hurting myself more and more. So cheers for now.

Tomorrow I will probably feel better again.

;-( :.

So today I am cynical

I have been busting my butt these last few days, even weeks in working to get a website , a blog, a chat forum, an online calendar and a newsletter subscription page setup for our church.

After advertising the web address in the church news bulletin for the last two weeks, my net meter tells me that the only people who visited any of these sites were me and my wife.

Now I know, It is true and I knew from the beginning that we are in a small church community. A lot of the people are elderly and not web savvy. But not one ?? out of 300 members ?

Why am I doing this ?
Because I do believe that there are people out there who needs a place to discuss and grow their theology. That there are people who need to be able to ask questions and discuss problems whilst still having a little bit of anonymity .

Just needed vent my frustration.

It is not as if this blog has a lot of readers either.

I am confused

So what do I make of the following :

For my wife and I our last real holiday was 8 years ago. That was also our honeymoon. Since then we have had the odd getaway weekend or so but never a nice long holiday.

Part of the problem was that we relocated every two years when her job had us move to a new congregation. Now because she was essentially employed by the same employer (the church) she had alway had annual leave due to her. For me on the other hand it was a different story. I had to quit my job and start a new one in a new town every time we moved.

Ok Ok , whoa now. Before you think it : I never resented, my wife , or the Church or God for the fact that we moved so frequently. I knew what we were getting into when she entered the ministry and that was, and is , fine by me.

Any way. On monday for the first time , we will be able to go on holiday . And God graciously supplied us a beach house to use for free. Knowing that my wife (and I) desperately need a holiday I prayed about it and God gave us the house through one of his faithful servants.

The problem is that I do not have money for food or petrol. nada, niks. I paid my last bill and paid over my tithe this morning and now there is nothing left in my account.

Apart from that we have a mountain of medical bills to pay. ( Our medical aid has reached it's limit for the year. It is not a very good fund to begin with!)

And so here is my confusion:

I really belive that god supplied us with this beach house and opportunity. But I have been seriously praying for just one more job , or something so I at least will have money to take my wife on holiday. Up to now I have had no answer, and I am slowly starting to despair.

Did I misunderstand God ? Was the beach house not from Him ? Must I phone the owner of the beach house and at least let him know in advance that we are not going anymore ?

I just don't know!! I know that God can supply my needs. In fact I have lots of story's to tell of where He has done that. I am trying so hard not to doubt, but man is it hard.

anyway .....

In the Image of God

For the past couple of days if not weeks I have constantly come across the term “image of God”. If not in the movies ,then in a sermon or a book that I am reading. So I decided to explore this term a little closer.

What does it mean ?

Let us look at the first time this term is used :

Gen 1:26 God spoke: "Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea, the birds in the air, the cattle, And, yes, Earth itself, and every animal that moves on the face of Earth."

Gen 9:6 Whoever sheds human blood, by humans let his blood be shed, Because God made humans in his image reflecting God's very nature.

Now according to the strongs dictionary the word image is translated from the Hebrew ‘tselem’. tseh'-lem

From an unused root meaning to shade; a phantom, that is, (figuratively) illusion, resemblance; hence a representative figure

The part that catches my eye is : representative figure .

The other part I want to look at is the fact that we were created to reflect God’s nature. Now , God’s very nature is that He is a God of love. This means that we were created to reflect God’s love on this earth. Human beings are the only beings capable of loving.

So, God created human beings to be his reps on earth. We were created to reflect God’s love on earth. Why were we given this amazing gift of love ? I believe it is because God created us with a primary function to love Him. All other things are of secondary importance.

Here lies a problem though. For love to be what it is and for love to have its value it needs to be free choice. I am not going to go into this , but if you think about it you will see that love without free will has no value.

Let us get back to our creation story . It is interesting to note that up to tbefoe humands were created God said: ”Let there be …..”. But when it came to creating humans God said :” Let us make…”

Now I wonder about this ‘us’. Who is this us that God talks about? God and the angels? Might be. But I think that God is talking to Himself as the Trinity.

Let us backtrack quickly. I believe that Jesus is God’s word. Why ?

Joh 1:1-4 GW In the beginning the Word already existed. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. (2) He was already with God in the beginning. (3) Everything came into existence through him. Not one thing that exists was made without him. (4) He was the source of life, and that life was the light for humanity.

And then in Genesis :

Gen 1:1-3 GW In the beginning God created heaven and earth. (2) The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep water. The Spirit of God was hovering over the water. (3) Then God said, "Let there be light!" So there was light.

So I believe that at the beginning of time at creation God the Father, Jesus the Word, and The Holy Spirit were all present. And everything was created by God through Jesus. And then comes human beings and now we have the Trinity who does the creation. And God as the Trinity creates human beings in His image with the capability to reflect His love.

And so I believe that God created every human being with the capability to love. And that love manifests itself when we love others and when we love God. With that capability to love however also came a choice. There had to. And so all human beings have the choice whether they are going to love others and God or not.

Sadly Adam and Eve made a choice that impacted on all generations since then. Mislead by Satan they chose against God and God , being the gracious loving God that He is , allowed them their choice. He had to. For His love to be real He had to allow us the freedom to reject Him. But make no mistake since that day He calls us to come back. Every single moment He longs for us to accept His love and come back to Him.

I see that this post is going to become a long one. As I think this thru I will post my thoughts here.