Copyright 2013 PJ Stassen
All Rights Reserved
He who gives a child a home,
builds palaces in Kingdom Come.
-
John Masefield,
1875-1967.
When I was about 7 years old in 1954, my widowed
great-grandmother, ‘Granny Gouws’, born in 1869, used to visit us from time to time to stay
for a few weeks or so at our home in Randgate, Randfontein, South Africa. She was about 85 years old at the time, a
veteran of the Anglo-Boer War and a (rare) concentration-camp survivor of that war. She was about 30 years old when they were
herded together sometime between 1899-1902 and driven on foot to a
concentration camp in Potchefstroom by the ‘Tommies’ attached to Lord Redverse Buller’s and later Lord Frederick Roberts’ British forces in South Africa ('Tommy' is slang for an English soldier, derived from the traditional English ‘Tommy Atkins’).
Later,
when the first, and conventional, phase of the war was practically wrapped up as
far as Lord Fred Roberts was concerned, he returned to England for the inevitable hero’s
welcome only to leave the exasperated Lord Horatio Kitchener in charge of the gruelling
and problematical last, guerrilla phase of the war. This was during the days of the founding of the British army's scorched-earth policy with its notorious
concentrations camps, the farm-burnings by the British, the thousands of blockhouses (about 8000, but I stand to be corrected) erected along railway lines all over the country where the conflict was raging, and with the legendary Jan Smuts, Christiaan De Wet and Koos De La Rey raids on unsuspecting British troops. Some of those blockhouses can still be seen scattered over the South African landscape today.
This
post is not meant to settle old scores with my British friends, as there probably
were pros and cons and merit to both sides of the story as to the why’s and
the how’s of the war, a terrain I will leave for the historians and ‘wannabe’
politicians to argue about; it is anyway common
knowledge today that the 'Boers' (South Africans) later, in 1914 and again in 1939, went on to fight against
the Germans alongside the British during World War I and the Nazis during World War II.
Incidentally, some historians actually believe that the
Anglo-Boer War was the true First
World War, because (i) so many countries were involved, (ii) the weapons-technology
was so (relatively) advanced and (ii) it was, at the time, the biggest armada of warships (in history) ever dispatched by England across the ocean to engage in a war.
Nevertheless, Granny Gouws was seriously injured one day during the
Anglo-Boer War when a stray bomb from the ‘Tommies’ fell right through the roof to where she lay sleeping in her bed. Apparently it did not explode, but the injuries sustained from the incident nevertheless left her maimed and hunchbacked for the
rest of her life. I can still remember
the hunchbacked little woman sitting at our
kitchen table in Randgate, folding and smoothing my Mother’s immaculately clean dishcloths over and over and
over with her gnarled fingers while she spoke at length of her life as a child, and also of the later
years. How we loved the old woman, but we children had no idea of (or an appreciation for) the immense cultural chasm that separated our generation over space and time from hers.
What a shock when my pet white mouse disappeared one day and we at last discovered the impertinent little jerk sleeping blissfully in the hollow of Granny Gouws’ neck. Incidentally, my Mother is almost as old today as Granny Gouws was in 1957 (how time flies ... it truly waits for no one).
What a shock when my pet white mouse disappeared one day and we at last discovered the impertinent little jerk sleeping blissfully in the hollow of Granny Gouws’ neck. Incidentally, my Mother is almost as old today as Granny Gouws was in 1957 (how time flies ... it truly waits for no one).
Granny Gouws' significance for me today is in the habit she had to pray for us as children, every day of
her life. During balmy summer evenings, while we used to play outside in the yard and games like dobbertjie, hide & seek, kennetjie and bobbies & thieves out in the streets until late at night, we sometimes could hear her beginning to pray for us in
her room shortly after dinner. In fact, we could hear her (the proverbial) ‘miles away’, mentioning each of us by name, one by one. She was
an experienced intercessor, an indefatigable ‘pray-er’ and a no-nonsense
believer in the God (Yahweh) of the Bible and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We used to marvel at her stamina … she simply
seemed to pray for hours on end.
At the time I could, as a child, never fully understand the purpose of all that strange ‘religiosity’ and incessant praying ... I only knew, instinctively, that some (if not most) grown-ups believed in God and that 'saying
one’s prayers', for some reason or other, must have been critically important. But all that
changed in 1962 when I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour and for the
first time in my mundane, small-town existence knew that at last I was ‘coming
home’.
Of course, later came the barren ‘backslidden years’ of irresponsible young
adulthood and the obnoxious transgressions, sins and indiscretions that usually go with the brazen arrogance
and unbridled entitlement of youth (it was to be expected, almost 'par' for the course) but I look back today and thank God for the prayers
of a concentration-camp survivor called ‘Granny Gouws’, a small, hunchbacked, midget
of a woman but a mighty intercessor and prayer-warrior in Christ! Thanks to her (and other people like her) I
have come home, never more to roam.
When I think back over my life, I hang my head in shame and acute embarrassment over the moral indiscretions, mistakes and failures of my inglorious past. I cannot undo what I had done wrong, neither blot out the ugly memory of my many glaring imperfections, but what I can do is to kneel at the cross and ask that humble Carpenter-Rabbi from Nazareth for forgiveness and pardon, and by His great thirst on the cross of Calvary to bring the water of LIFE also to me. Today the invitation for people to return to Christ and to come ‘home’ still stands:
When I think back over my life, I hang my head in shame and acute embarrassment over the moral indiscretions, mistakes and failures of my inglorious past. I cannot undo what I had done wrong, neither blot out the ugly memory of my many glaring imperfections, but what I can do is to kneel at the cross and ask that humble Carpenter-Rabbi from Nazareth for forgiveness and pardon, and by His great thirst on the cross of Calvary to bring the water of LIFE also to me. Today the invitation for people to return to Christ and to come ‘home’ still stands:
Revelation 22:16 I
Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things for the churches. I
am the root and the offspring of David, the bright, the morning star.
Revelation
22:17 And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And he that heareth, let
him say, Come. And he that is athirst, let him come: he that will, let him take
the water of life freely. (ASV, www.e-word.net).
(William J. Kirkpatrick, 1838-1921)
I’ve wandered far away from God ‒
Now I’m coming home;
The paths of sin too long I’ve trod ‒
Lord I’m coming home.
I’ve wasted many precious years ‒
Now I’m coming home;
I now repent with bitter tears ‒
Lord, I’m coming home.
I’ve tired of sin and straying, Lord ‒
Now I’m coming home;
I’ll trust Thy love, believe Thy word ‒
Lord, I’m coming home.
My soul is sick, my heart is sore ‒
Now I’m coming home ‒
My strength renew, my hope restore ‒
Lord, I’m coming home.
CHORUS
Coming home, coming home,
Never more to roam;
Open now Thine arms of love ‒
Lord, I’m coming home.
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'Bertrand Russell Revisited: Rebuttal Of Bertrand
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verspreiding (AFRIKAANS)
Bibliography
1.
Andrews,
Allen (1969) Quotations For Speakers And Writers. Newnes Books. Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd. London.
2.
Peterson,
John W. (1966) Great
Hymns Of The Faith. ‘Lord, I’m Coming Home’. Singspiration Inc. Zondervan Publishing House. Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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