Читать книгу Stories of real faith - Helana Olivier - Страница 4

Life happens while we are planning something else. There is no dress rehearsal to prepare us for “real” life. Life happens relentlessly, at the pace of one day at a time. We have scarcely clambered over yesterday’s wall when we find today on our doorstep. Sometimes it takes just one crisis in “today” to send our life forever in a new direction. Then everything is upside down. What do you do when, in the blink of an eye, life takes on a completely different complexion? Will that one big setback I encountered suddenly leave me bitter and bewildered? Will my faith take a permanent knock? And what of the successes? Will unexpected breakthroughs change me into an arrogant, over-confident being?

Perhaps the secret of life is that there is no great secret. Life proceeds along different routes. For each of us the path of life has different twists and turns. Yet it’s in the middle of such unexpected moments – good or bad – that the true heroes of life are born. These heroes are not like the figures on the silver screen. No, they are ordinary flesh-and-blood people who refuse to surrender in the face of that one great “today-setback”. They are the ones who choose to swim against the current, persevering against all resistance. They are the ones who believe that a new path is possible and who clear that path by living it daily. These true heroes are that small band who grasps God’s hand in a new way in the darkness. They even manage to walk a few steps on water along with Jesus.

The stories of a few water-walkers are shared first-hand in this book. Their routes are touching, inspiring and downright courageous. Their lives proclaim loudly that unexpected good or bad events do not have the last say over us. True character is proven in the storm, where pain and excesses are transformed by ordinary individuals into new routes of grace.

This is what I have learnt from the stories of the contributors to this book: That one day of their lives that was totally different did not flatten them. Instead, it inspired them to new heights. They are living examples of what the well-known writer Henri Nouwen said, “I used to hate interruptions to my ministry until I understood that interruptions were my ministry.” No interruption, then, but rather a new ministry is what emerges in each of these stories. What a moving, life-changing book!

Dr Stephan Joubert

Honorary Professor, Department of New Testament Studies, University of Pretoria; Research Fellow, Radboud University; The Netherlands Editor, ekerk (echurch)