Stewart 5

I wrote a report on Sir Francis Drake in elementary school.  I’ve also seen him quoted as calling the peninsula with Cape Town, “the fairest cape in all the world.”  And, he was an adventurous dude, fighting naval battles and sailing around the globe.  Nice stuff Sir Francis.

Not too long ago a friend put this on his blog.  It is a prayer written by Francis Drake.  What a prayer  - and I find myself praying the same along with him - dreams, adventure, wild seas:

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land, We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future In strength, courage, hope, and love.

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I don’t do a good job of regularly updating our blogroll.  However, I added a few links today that I wanted to bring to your attention:

Dion Forster’s blog - Dion is asking all the right questions here in South Africa and I am hoping to learn a lot from him.

Tim Keel’s blog - met Tim at the Amahoro conference in Uganda last year.  Tim is pastor at Jacob’s Well in KC and just had a book - Intuitive Leadership - published.

Jackson Pollock - when you want to blow off steam or have fun drawing, check out this site!  You get to create Jackson Pollock style.

Photosensibility - my friend Andrew Gray in Japan is an excellent photographer and posts pics daily.  Beautiful.

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Our family/community celebrates 2 American holidays - 4th of July and Thanksgiving. T’giving has been particularly meaningful for me because:

1. it has become a day to actually think of what I am thankful for
2. we have had the opportunity to share this day with many South African friends over the past several years
3. food = memories. And our expats have all learned how to make and adapt the foods we all remember and love from home.

Yesterday, we had 22 for Thanksgiving dinner - mostly South Africans. We shared a bit about the history, intro’d the food, shared things we are thankful for around tables, and ATE. After dessert (including the best pumpkin pie I have ever eaten), we sang a couple of songs of thanks to God. It was the a wonderful evening!

Public and heartfelt thanks to Melissa for coordinating the entire affair

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Living in South Africa, I have had many opportunities to support local sports teams as well as the national side. It has been helpful that SA has some good teams - particularly rugby and cricket. This year, the Springboks won the rugby world cup. Currently, the cricket team is playing extremely well.

The weak team, to be perfectly honest, is Bafana Bafana - the men’s national soccer team. This is extremely painful for me because soccer is my favorite sport. So today, when the US Men’s soccer team had a game against SA here in Joburg, I found myself rooting for my old country. This is the first time I have rooted AGAINST South Africa, even in games I thought they were playing a better team. I have been predicting (and this is verifiable by dated email correspondence) that the US would win. Hard to have to say, but they really do have a better team (they are ranked 18 in the world, SA is 83).

Not only did the United States completely outplay South Africa today, but they beat them 1-0.

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ok, this is pretty much non-scientifically-verifiable. However, my experience and small about of spiritual discernment leads me to believe there is actually a spirit of fear with influence over South Africa. Whether you hold a more liberal perspective (there aren’t actual person-spirits), or you do indeed believe in demons and territorial spirits, there seems to be a pervasive ethos here that leads people to fear.

It’s reasonably obvious in the general populace. The abundance of security gates/bars and generally-accepted fables about “how many people get carjacked, robbed, etc.” leave no question that South Africans generally hold a perspective that they are not safe. I have also noticed that people that come to visit/live who have pre-existing fear issues seem to have these magnified while they are here.

I believe there is a strong spirit or spirits that have much influence in this part of the world that cause people to be fearful. Why would they want to do that? Because this causes us to put our trust in things other than God (like handguns or security systems). It causes us to dis-trust our neighbor. It propagates stereotypes about others. It keeps us from living free and fulfilling lives. Our enemy wants nothing more than to keep people isolated, unhappy, and alone.

I also believe that we can pray against such spiritual forces. AND, we can receive and live in the perfect love that God offers - love that casts out fear because there is nothing to fear when we are with God.

Please pray against the spirit of fear in South Africa.

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continuing from the last blog post re: IS SOUTH AFRICA SAFE?

What is safe to you?

I understand that this is not so much an either/or questions as a quantitative/qualitative one. But when you say a place is safe, or not, or somewhat safe, what do you have in your mind? What are the things you factor in (perhaps even subconsciously) when you think of safety?

murder, rape, robbery…

Everyone worries about different things, don’t they? What is safe to you?

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IS SOUTH AFRICA SAFE?

1. Is America safe? See, that’s not a fair question, is it? America is a big place. Really, you can’t even say, “is Michigan safe?” Because, of course, some parts are, some part’s aren’t. Is Fresno safe? See, even one town and you can’t answer unequivocally for the whole place, right?

2. What is safe, really? Now, I don’t mean by definition. I am saying that SAFETY IS AN ENTIRELY SUBJECTIVE FEELING. You and I can be in the exact same place or situation and I feel fine and you are scared (for any number of reasons). Is it safe? Well, depends on who you ask AND what they base their answer on. So, has a crime ever been committed in SA? Yes. Does that make it unsafe? How many crimes, or what types of crime = unsafety? I walk from work to home several times a day, at any time of the day. For me, I obviously consider our neighborhood safe. Other people won’t drive with their windows down or doors unlocked. Same neighborhood. Is is safe?

Am I the only one who thinks, “Is South Africa safe?” an unfair and impossible to answer question? I only ask because people ask it all the time. What do you think? More to come (if I don’t get killed tomorrow)…

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