Monday 27 September 2010

Gary Player's secret

Gary Player was probably one of South Africa's greatest golfers. He beat the likes of Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus in his time. One of his favourite sayings was, 'the harder you practice the luckier you get!'
I once read about him, somewhere, that he hit 1000 golf balls per day! And he jogged regularly and did push ups. But besides his physical discipline he had the habit of keeping his cupboard tidy. He learned that from his father who died when he was only a young boy. His father never saw him play golf. His father never saw how much he achieved. Sometimes he had nightmares about his father - watching him play golf! But his father taught him how to keep his cupboard neat.
His shoes were in the right place, his socks would be folded up and placed in the one corner and his belts in the other corner. His shirts would be folded up and packed on top of each other and his ties would hang in order. The trousers and jackets would all be hanging in a certain order.
Gary firmly believes that the little disciplines of ordinary life is what helped him when he had to sink the championship winning put on a golf course. When the mind is used to orderliness in normal circumstances it will be disciplined under severe pressure as well.
My father was like that - he was a lieutenant in the Air Force of South Africa during WWII and flew the Tiger Moth planes. His dream was to fly the Spitfire but he never went to England. The Air Force kept him at the home front and put him in charge of the Arsenal because he did such a good job of putting things in their place.

So you can imagine what his cupboard looked like: like a men's department store! It was never out of place. Even on the day he died, I opened his cupboard and it was extremely neat and orderly!

There is an obscure verse in the New Testament describing Jesus' tomb. The disciples went to the tomb and found it empty. But they found the grave clothes and the head cloths folded neatly at the head where Jesus lay. That is a sign of a slave telling his Master that his work is done and that he is waiting for His reward.

Jesus had completed his earthly mission to perfection. He folded up his graveclothes neatly and stacked it where he laid his head to show to His Heavenly Father that his work was done: it is finished!

In the army we only got weekend passes if our cupboards passed inspection.

I also know that artists need a bit of chaos around them to be creative! The earth was created out of chaos, remember? Even God requires some chaos to prove His creativity!

But there is a lesson to learn here, somewhere,that a disciplined mind is a certain asset under pressure. To think under pressure is not just a gift, but a practiced behaviour. What you cannot do under normal circumstances you cannot hope to do under pressure.

So, thanks, Mr. Player, for that bit of advice, we salute you.

Friday 17 September 2010

Running down the stairs

Running down the stairs
The Cockney phrase, ‘up the apple and pears’, is slang for: ‘up stairs’. For instance, if one guy asks the other, ‘where’s ya missus?’ he could answer, ‘up the apple and pears’. When someone is looking for his glasses, but they are already on his nose, the conversation could go as follows: ‘where’s me binocs?’ and the other would answer, ‘on yer I suppose!’
The Greek language often has colourful descriptions behind the words.
For instance, there is a verse of scripture translated into English, do not bite and devour one another, or you might be consumed. The picture behind those words in Greek, are more revealing.
It shows someone running down the ‘apple and pears’ and out of the house!
Words have a powerful effect on us. If words are biting, they might become devouring. Once something has been devoured it is consumed!
By too much criticism, people feel like leaving a house. Children often are made to feel like that by the overbearing parents who forgot what they were like as kids. Their parents treated them harshly and spoke down at them; therefore they treat their children in the same manner. We just can’t help ourselves!
Paul warns us not to exasperate our children with too much correction. We have to create space for them to grow up. That means we need to allow some mistakes here and there and not police them all the time. It takes time for a child to change, yet parents demand immediate change. They must first want to change before they ever will. They must first see the need to change before they want to change.
Children sometimes feel like running down the stairs and out of the house and never coming back! Parents are often the cause. In Scotland children run away from home more than in any other country. I wonder why? Perhaps the parents in Scotland should take a long hard look at how they treat their children and what demands they make of them?
Husbands and wives sometimes treat each other with such harshness that the one or the other wants to run down stairs and out of the house! Unfortunately it can lead to divorce.
A friend of mine, in London, told me about his divorce: ‘One morning I just woke up and said to myself, I don’t want to live anymore!’ Then I asked myself, ‘why not?’ and I could answer it very easily: ‘I had a bully for a father, and I have had a bully for a wife, and I just don’t want to live under a bully any longer!’
I am sure his wife also had her reasons about his ‘emotional instability’. But she did not want to admit was that she was the cause of it in many ways!
Bosses often make their employees run down the stairs and out of the business – they resign and leave. Pastors often make church people run down the stairs and out of the church because of the way they bite and devour the people from the pulpit.
Governments make people leave the country because of their unfair treatment. More than 5 million white South Africans have left the country since the change of government. The pendulum has swung in the other direction after the Apartheid regime.
Sad to say, some desperate individuals who see no other way out, commit suicide because they have been bitten devoured and consumed by others…
Murders are committed because people have had enough.
Sometimes people die of heart failure because they have had it. A teacher at a private school, in his late forties told me a few weeks before he suddenly collapsed and died, ‘I’ve had it in this school!’ Sometimes principals and school systems are too hard on both teachers and scholars – they run down the stairs and out of the school.
And all of us can change the way we speak to each other.
Paul reminds us to let our speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt so that we may know how to answer anyone who asks us concerning the hope we have in life.
What I remember about people is the way they spoke to me. Some made me feel like a champion and gave me courage to carry on; some made me feel worthless and useless.
Think back about your teachers: which ones do you remember? You remember the ones who tried to speak kindly to you. The ones who ridiculed and humiliated you made you hate their subject.
The sound of the voice is sometimes more important than the message conveyed. The tone of voice carries the feelings behind the words. Let us learn to speak kindly to one another and hopefully make someone’s day memorable and worthwhile.

His bowtie is really a camera

His bowtie is really a camera
S & G or Simon & Garfunkel sang ‘We all come to look for America!’ One of the verses is about a man in a gabardine shirt that looks like a spy, and then the one line says in a comical way, ‘be careful his bowtie is really a camera!’
Clever dialogue and descriptions in their songs used to catch my attention. For instance the two old people who sit on park benches like Bookends (propping each other up). The Sounds of Silence and silence does have sound if you care to listen. The opening line is probably a description of the billions of city dwellers everywhere, not just in NY: ‘Hello silence my old friend, I’ve come to talk to you again’. And then the unforgettable ‘words of the prophets are written on the subway walls’.
Mrs Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you would know wow-wow-wow! And that is where I want to camp for today. Mike Nichols used the S & G songs in the sound track for his film, The Graduate, starring a youthful Dustin Hoffman and an ageing Anne Bancroft, who played Mrs. Robinson.
But I have another Mrs. Robinson in mind.
While I was a student at Miracle Valley Bible College in Arizona, it no longer exists anymore, Dr. Gray, our principal encouraged us to read, Radiant Glory, the biography about Mrs. Robinson, who dedicated her life to loving Jesus. Her house was the only one left standing in the great Chicago fire. They were praying inside and escaped the terror of the devastating fire.
She prayed over I Corinthians 13 for two years: until she felt that those verses were internalized in her life. Love is patient, love is kind. Just start with those two. Love is not always a feeling as we presume. We want to feel love because we want to feel loved. But let’s look at what we are patient with. What draws kindness from us? Those are the things we love.
People are sometimes more patient and kind to their dogs and cats than to one another. Why? The Bible says in the last days there will be perilous times, because people will be lovers of themselves more than lovers of God; they will love money more than God and they will love pleasure more than God.
These three things describe our modern, materialistic, selfish and utterly sinful society – these things also cause pain and wars among us.
The love of money for instance is the root of all kinds of evil – not money.
Unfortunately the first line in Napoleon Hill’s book, that everyone reads sooner or later, How to think and grow rich, is, if you want money you must love money. He tells you how to feel the money in your pocket and to always have money in your wallet, because if you love money it attracts money. It is diametrically opposed to the Gospel of the Kingdom where money is not a god but a means to serve the Kingdom of God.
God promises to be a God that will teach us how to create wealth so that we may establish His Covenant in the earth. There is a condition to wealth creation, God’s way. The blessing of the Lord makes rich and adds no sorrow to it.
Self-love is promoted on every scale in modern life and narcissism rules the youth of today. There is a right perspective to all of this. You should first love God and then you can love your neighbour as yourself. That is the law of love that fulfils all the other commandments. But unless you experience the love of God it is impossible to love others or yourself in the right way.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life (John 3:16 in the Bible).
I Corinthians 13 tells us about love. If we have great faith, or make great sacrifices or even become a martyr it is empty without love as the motivating force.
Mrs. Robinson realised this and began asking God to fill her with His love. The Holy Spirit pours out the love of God in our hearts if we ask God in faith to give us His kind of agape love. Agape love is unselfish and unconditional. Our human love tends to be conditional: if you do this I might love you.
Pleasures that the world offer draw us away from God, rather than to Him. The pleasures of this life that is sinful are like thorns that choke a growing plant. The desires for things other than the things of God take the place that God should have in our hearts and makes the Word of God fruitless in our lives.
Where a heart is thoroughly prepared to receive the seed of the Word of God it bears a great harvest – hundred fold!
Mrs. Robinson experienced this in her life. She became a vessel of honour, mightily used of God to bless her generation and to leave behind a Radiant Glory for those who knew her. People used to drive great distances just to speak to her for a few seconds. Their lives were sorted out in a few minutes and they got direction, courage and hope just by seeing her.
I hope S & G were referring to the Mrs. Robinson in Radiant Glory rather than the one in The Graduate! It makes more sense that way. Perhaps we can learn from her to love one another. Perhaps we can help to make the world a better place.
If we listen to S & G we could have a different perspective on Mrs. Robinson!

Thursday 16 September 2010

When I'm Sixty-Four

Just close to sixty now, I thought of the Beatle's song, 'When I'm sixty four'. Two of them are gone already - before that age. Lennon shot five times in the back in front of his New York apartment by a madman. George passed away after illness. Pretty boy Paul still lingering on holding concerts here and there, and Ringo hiding somewhere. The Fab four thrilled the world for a while and for 50 years we are living in the afterglow of their 100 number one tunes being played over and over again on all the radio stations of the world.
Was it all just a fad or a brilliant marketing campaign or did the Liverpool lads have some genius after all? Did it lay in the mix of McCartney & Lennon, or was it the foursome magic that worked on all of us? Did the spark die when Lennon disappeared? It's just not the same without him. Like Simon & Garfunkel, the one without the other just doesn't work as well, or like Crosby, Stills & Nash, or Dylan and The Band.
Were the Beatles really more popular than Jesus Christ, like Lennon claimed before he died. Just before Elvis and even Michael Jackson crossed over to the other side they were worshipped as gods of rock and roll.
The Old Covenant law looms up,'Thou shalt not have any other gods before me...'
So much we still need to understand.
But the point is, John never lived till 64.
'Will you still need me
Will you still feed me
When I'm sixty four'
I think of all my friends throughout life that didn't make that magic figure either. They're gone, deceased, out of here. And I am thinking hard today...
When I had my close shaves in life, I wondered why I made it? I don't deserve to be here, I have no special claim to life itself, it is a miracle that we are still all alive. Its not luck - its pure grace and mercy.
It is a humbling and sobering thought...64
So let me tie my shoe laces up, put on my belt, pull it tight, pull my hat over my eyes, to keep the bright sunlight out, grab my coat and hit the road again...till I'm 64 (DV)

Friday 10 September 2010

Music to the soul


Bob Dylan's albums have to grow on you. He is almost 70 but still doing 169 concerts per year - on the road!Amazing rambler!Amazing energy!And he won an Oscar recently for a movie theme song.
They asked him once, how do you remember all the words to your songs?
'It's easy,'he replied in his non-chalant way,'a song is like a path in a field: once you find it you just walk on. A good song walks by itself. It's a memory and you just relive it.'
When you buy a Dylan album, you listen and think, this is nothing special. You put it away for a while. Then you listen again, and later on again. And then you find it grew on you. Some of the phrases, some of the tunes, some of the rhythms got stuck somewhere, inside, in your memory bank. It made a pathway in your sub-conscious. His songs all sound like, 'I've heard that somewhere before.'But they are new, they just have a ancient sound to them.
In one of his latest albums, Modern Times, he sings Workingman's Blues. There is a phrase that sort of stick out in the song:'sometimes no one wants what you've got, sometimes you can't give it away!'
at first it sounds like you have heard that phrase before, but you haven't, not quite like Dylan expresses it with his rusty aged voice.
Life has a way to creep into your heart unnoticed - like a Dylan song. You don't quite know if you chose to remember something, but when you search your heart, there it is, loud and clear, almost like a label. You don't always know why. But if you look back on your life certain things just stuck in your mind.
Looking back on my life as a commando in the South African army, I remember things I did not try to remember. I forgot some things I thought I would remember. The same with school, the same with distant family members and friends.
Songs have got a way to remind you of what is inside you, where you were when you first heard it, it triggers a memory that got stuck inside and you have to stop and consider it for a moment, it speaks, it echoes and it resounds in your soul, it haunts you, it revives you, it excites you, it gives you comfort and courage to carry on.
That is the power of music. We all need songs in our lives.
David praised God who gave him songs in the night. In the worst time of our lives God gives us songs to strengthen our resolve and to remind us of what He has buried deep inside of our spirits.
Let us keep on singing, humming tunes, whistling while we work (except the glass blower, like my brother-in-law Murray always jokes!)
Let us put some melody in our lives today and in someone else's life. Stop and sing. Listen to a good old tune. Don't worry if no one else likes it. It is meant for you. Only you. It is what your soul needs now. It is a vitamin tablet for your soul.
Shakespeare said, If music is the food of love, play on, play on!

Thursday 9 September 2010

That's not what ships were made for



I reached a forlorn Outback town in New South Wales called Gilgandra where I and my two unique band members performed Gospel songs in an AOG church and afterwards drove for miles and miles on dirt roads to get to the station (Aussie for farm) where we lodged for the night and I felt I was in the middle of nowhere.
The home was in a dishevelled state: especially the bathroom. There was no shower wall or curtain. Puddles of water were everywhere. The dirty clothes and towels were strewn all over the damp floor. The toothpaste tube was half squeezed out and the top was nowhere to be seen. The toothbrushes suited the scene: the brushes were pushed out from over-use. The basin was dirty with rings of dirt mounting one on the other.
For someone like me who came from a pristine Victorian albeit Afrikaner home where the table cloth and matching serviettes were starched and rows of cutlery were used for the four course meal, it was a bit nerve wracking to view the bathroom where no one seemed to mind the state it was in.
I remember looking at my watch. It was about midnight. I suddenly felt an overwhelming sense of purposeless welling up in me.
‘What on earth am I doing in a place like this?’
I felt that our ‘call’ to be in Australia was suddenly so useless. I felt like a misfit, the proverbial square peg in a round hole. Australia didn’t receive us well. What on earth am I still doing here, in the Outback trying to preach and sing the Gospel? The offerings hardly get me from place to place. My wife and kids are hoping I bring something back from this exhausting mission’s tour, but alas, I can foresee nothing positive about my efforts any more.
A sense of sadness crept over me and I felt as dark inside as it was outside. An Emu was circling the house making unearthly noises, like a stone dropping into a water container.
I washed my face in the dirty washing bowl, avoiding the dirty toothbrushes. Then I looked for a towel. They were all damp and used before. Then I spotted some behind the door hoping they would at least be clean, but to my dismay they were dirty too. I took one to dry my face. The smell of the towel was so off-putting that it made me nauseas.
As I lifted the towel an old, torn poster collapsed towards the floor. The towel was propping it up behind the door. I pushed the poster back up and then stared at it for a while.
It was a picture of an old sailing boat in a storm: mast cracked, sails torn and waves bashing over the deck with seamen sprawling for cover and hanging onto the ropes.
‘That’s exactly how I feel inside,’ I thought.
As I straightened it out I noticed the inscription at the bottom.
‘A ship is safe in a harbour; but that is not what ships were made for!’ was all it said.
I took it in and started weeping, silently at first, but audibly after a while. I sank to my knees with the dirty towel in my hands. I understood the message so clearly.
I could have been safe and sound in my own country, South Africa, with a secure 9-5 job and loving parents and friends around me and my family: instead we chose to obey our call to Australia as missionaries. Here I am, in the middle of nowhere, feeling lost in all the storms of life, and at the moment nothing makes sense any more. But like the old ship I have precious cargo to convey to the other shore. I have something to give, even if it is just to minister to a few people in the Outback.
Fairdinkum!
The poster and its inscription inspired me and gave me new courage to carry on and do what I came to do! I learned an important lesson: Christians are safe in churches, but that is not what Christians were made for!
Jesus said, ‘Go into the whole world and make disciples of all nations!’
At least I have obeyed the great commission. At least I’ve given it my best shot!
Since then I have been to 66 nations now…as the great old hymn Amazing Grace says,
‘Through many dangers, toils and snares
I have already come
It’s grace that brought me safe thus far
And grace will lead me home.’
‘Amazing grace how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost but now I’m found
I was blind but now I see.’
Amazing Grace was written by Newton, a slave trader, who faced many a storm at sea, and survived to tell the tale. Perhaps that picture would have touched him deeply as well. It touched me for sure. It changed my life. It changed my attitude. It gave me a will to live and to do something meaningful with my life.