We Know What We Are

“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.” — William Shakespeare

We know how to be despondent. We know how to be disillusioned. We know how to catalogue our disappointments, rehearse our grievances, and we definitely know how to remind one another of everything that is wrong with the world. Life is hard. Nobody needs to convince us of that. We have lived long enough, lost enough, loved enough, and endured enough to understand that suffering is not an abstract concept. 

Somewhere along the way, we have become rather accomplished at misery.

We give our worries our mornings, our frustrations our afternoons, and our anxieties the quiet hours of the night. We invest enormous amounts of emotional energy in circumstances we cannot change, people we cannot reach, and events over which we have no influence. We discuss them, dissect them, debate them, and carry them around as though the mere act of worrying might somehow make the world a better place.

Then there is the bandwagon.

A terrible thing happens somewhere in the world, and we climb aboard. Another injustice, another tragedy, another controversy. We become emotionally entangled in the suffering, the outrage, and the arguments surrounding it. Consider the public debate about Christa Pike's botched execution. Whatever one's views on justice, punishment, or the death penalty, the subject is deeply disturbing. It invites difficult questions about human dignity, accountability, and the consequences of our decisions. These are matters worth considering seriously.

But! We must also ask ourselves how much of our emotional lives we surrender to events happening thousands of kilometres away, involving people we have never met, while the lives immediately around us receive what little attention remains.

What is happening in our own homes? What is happening to the person sitting across the table? What conversation have we postponed? Whose loneliness have we overlooked? What have we stopped noticing because we are too busy being outraged by something else?

We can know every detail of a distant tragedy and remain oblivious to the quiet suffering of someone we love. We can argue passionately about the moral failures of strangers while refusing to examine the unkindness, impatience, or indifference we bring into our own relationships. We can spend hours discussing the state of the world and fail to notice that our own small corner of it is becoming a little colder.

This is not an argument for indifference. The suffering of others matters. Injustice matters. Compassion should never end at the boundaries of our immediate surroundings. We are part of a wider human family, and it would be a sorry thing if we became so preoccupied with our own lives that we ceased to care about anyone else's.

There is a difference between caring and being consumed. There is a difference between being informed and being emotionally imprisoned by the news. There is a difference between acknowledging what is wrong and allowing what is wrong to occupy so much of our attention that we become blind to what is good, possible, and within our reach.

We cannot personally repair every injustice, resolve every conflict, or alleviate every sorrow. We cannot carry the world's suffering on our shoulders without eventually becoming weary. And when our minds are perpetually occupied by the next outrage, our capacity to respond meaningfully to the suffering directly in front of us may diminish.

The greater danger is not that we feel too much. No. It is that we spend so much time feeling helpless that we forget we are not entirely helpless.

We may not be able to change the course of international events, but we can change the atmosphere in our homes. We may not be able to prevent every tragedy, but we can offer kindness to someone having a difficult day. We may not be able to correct the world's injustices, but we can refuse to contribute to the small injustices of everyday life. We can listen. We can forgive where forgiveness is appropriate. We can speak when silence would be cowardice. We can rest when we are exhausted, seek help when we are struggling, and allow ourselves moments of joy without feeling guilty that somewhere, someone else is suffering.

Life is hard. I cannot say this enough. And because life is hard, we should be careful about making it harder by giving every distressing thought, every bitter argument, and every unfolding controversy unrestricted access to our minds.

Negativity has a curious way of narrowing our vision. The more we concentrate on what is broken, the less we notice what remains intact. The more we expect disappointment, the less willing we become to recognise possibility. Eventually, we risk confusing our present circumstances with our future potential. We begin to believe that because life has hurt us, it has nothing more to offer us; because the world has disappointed us, there is nothing left to hope for; because we have suffered, suffering must become the defining story of our lives.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

We know our present difficulties. We know our limitations, our fears, our disappointments, and our scars. But we do not know what might yet grow from a difficult season, what a new perspective might teach us, what a small act of kindness might set in motion, or what possibilities we are overlooking because our attention is fixed on everything that has gone wrong.

We do not know who we might become if we spent less time rehearsing our grievances and more time cultivating our character. We do not know how much lighter our relationships might feel if we stopped bringing the world's anger into every conversation. We do not know what we might discover about ourselves if we occasionally stepped away from the noise and paid attention to the life unfolding quietly around us.

We need to become more deliberate about where we place our attention. Not because suffering is imaginary, or because positive thinking can magically resolve real problems, but because attention is a limited resource. What we continually feed with our thoughts eventually influences how we see the world, how we treat others, and how we experience our own lives.

There will always be something to lament. There will always be another controversy to debate, another injustice to condemn, and another reason to despair. The world will not run out of difficulties simply because we decide to stop discussing them for an afternoon.

Meanwhile, the coffee grows cold. The garden needs tending. A loved one has something to tell us. A friend is waiting for a telephone call. Our bodies need rest. Our minds need quiet. And somewhere between the latest headline and the next argument, the ordinary business of living continues.

We cannot always choose what happens to us. We cannot control the behaviour of others or guarantee that tomorrow will be kinder than today. But we can exercise some discretion over what we allow to consume us. We can care without drowning, remain informed without becoming obsessed, acknowledge sorrow without surrendering every possibility of joy.

We can recognise the darkness without making it our permanent address.

The question is not whether we understand how difficult life can be. Most of us have ample evidence. The question is whether, in our determination to acknowledge everything that is wrong, we have neglected the opportunity to become something more than the sum of our disappointments.

We know what we are today. But what might we yet be if we lifted our eyes from the world's endless catalogue of troubles and began, once again, to pay attention to the life within our reach?

That life, imperfect and unpredictable as it may be, is still happening.

We should be careful not to miss it.

Neither Thistle Nor Thorn

There's a lot of detail to a garden which the hurried eye misses. The rose isn't merely a flower, nor lavender merely purple, nor jasmine merely fragrant. Each possesses its own strange and secret character: the rose gathers colour into petal and thorn; lavender stands in its dusky ranks, breathing its clean, sober sweetness; jasmine, almost invisible in the dark, makes the darkness fragrant. Each thing is itself, and wonderfully so. One flower doesn't envy another. The rose doesn't wish to be lavender. The jasmine doesn't lament that it has no thorns. Each grows according to the nature given to it, and in that faithful becoming there's beauty.

And then there are the weeds.

The thistle thrusts itself upward, bristling and armed, as though the earth had given birth to a little green soldier. Couch grass creeps where it wasn't planted, insinuating itself beneath the soil, threading its pale roots into places meant for something else. The weed doesn't ask whether it is welcome. It comes, it spreads, it occupies. Some things in the garden aren't evil; they're simply not meant to be there. Others choke what was planted with care. And so, the gardener learns to distinguish. He doesn't hate the garden because weeds exist. He tends it.

Yet, here we are. People have a curious habit. When we enter the garden of the world, we often abandon the gardener's wisdom. We bend over the weeds. We examine them. We name them. We photograph them. We tell one another how ugly they are, and then return the next morning to look again. The rose may be opening three feet away, but our eyes remain upon the thistle.

Why?

What draws us towards disturbance? Why does the terrible always catch the eye? Why do cruel deeds travel quickly? The wicked person acquires a name, and the name is repeated until it becomes familiar. We read what was done, then read it again, and then tell someone else what we've read. We condemn the darkness while giving it our finest attention. We say we dislike it, yet we feed it with our curiosity.

And meanwhile, goodness flowers almost noiselessly.

The good neighbour unlocks the gate for someone whose hands are full. The mother rises while the house is still dark and begins another day's work. The faithful husband keeps his promise in the ordinary hours when nobody is looking. Someone leaves food at a struggling family's door, and doesn't wait to be thanked. Someone visits the lonely. Someone forgives. Someone chooses gentleness when anger would've been easier. Someone sees an animal in need and helps it. Someone else sees another person's burden and quietly lifts one corner of it.

No headline announces these things. No crowd gathers. No camera turns. No posts or comments are made online.

The good thing is that Heaven notices precisely what we choose not to see.

Goodness is often a quiet thing. It doesn't clamour for the eye. It has no need to make itself enormous. It grows like lavender: low, unpretending, filling the air with something the eye cannot see. It grows like jasmine: almost hidden, yet unmistakable when its fragrance reaches us. It grows like the rose, whose beauty is inseparable from the thorn.

And here the garden becomes more than a garden.

The mind has soil. The attention has water. The things upon which we continually dwell receive something from us. We may think we are merely looking, merely reading, merely listening, merely keeping informed. But attention is not empty. It enters us. It leaves a trace. What we repeatedly contemplate begins to inhabit the inner landscape.

We wouldn't wash our faces each morning in stagnant, filthy water and then wonder why our skin felt unclean. Yet, we may immerse the mind day after day in violence, cruelty, scandal, hatred, and degradation, and then wonder why the world begins to feel dark.

The problem isn't that we know evil exists. A gardener must know where the weeds are. The danger is that we begin to mistake the weeds for the whole garden. There's evil enough in the world without making it the chief object of our contemplation. There's sorrow enough without becoming fascinated by sorrow. There's ugliness enough without putting it continually upon the mantelpiece of the mind.

Look at what you've become. What has all that looking done to you?

Has your heart grown hard beneath the constant gaze? Has compassion withered there? Has empathy been crowded out by judgment? Has tenderness been strangled by the very weeds you've spent so much time examining?

Listen to your own words. Do they carry fragrance, or do they carry thorns? 

There are words that comfort like rain upon thirsty earth, words that soften a sorrow, words that make room for another human being's weakness. And there are words that prick and tear, like little verbal thistles, sharp at every point, leaving behind pain rather than peace, discord rather than understanding.

A thistle doesn't become a rose merely because we admire its thorns. Nor does cruelty become virtue because we've found a clever way of defending it.

It's a tragedy when we become so accustomed to ugliness that we begin to speak its language ourselves. We look upon bitterness until bitterness takes root in us. We feed upon contempt until contempt becomes our nourishment. We repeat harshness until harshness no longer sounds harsh to our own ears. And then we wonder why there is no fragrance left.

The garden of the heart requires tending, too.

Pull out what has taken root where kindness should grow. Cut back what has become excessive. Let silence sometimes do the work that another cruel sentence cannot. Make room again for mercy. For patience. For the simple dignity of treating another human being as someone whose heart, like your own, can bruise.

You don't have to pretend the weeds are flowers. But neither must you become a weed because you've spent too long among them.

There are still roses. There's still lavender. There's still jasmine waiting to release its fragrance into the evening.

And there's still, beneath all the choking growth, a small untrampled place in you where compassion can take root again.

Tend that place. Water it. Give it light. 

The questions you need to ask yourself every day are these: What am I looking at, and what is looking at it making of me? What am I listening to, and what is hearing it making of me?

Live this Day Well

Some days, the greatest battle we fight has nothing to do with what is happening around us. It is what is happening within us.

We wake up carrying yesterday's irritation, an old disappointment, a worry about tomorrow, or a resentment we thought we had dealt with. Then something small goes wrong, and suddenly the whole day feels against us.

Darkness creeps in through frustration, bitterness, envy, anger, self-pity, suspicion, and constant dissatisfaction. We focus so intently on what is wrong that we stop seeing what is still good.

So, what can we actually do to get through each day?

Own the day.
Owning the day doesn't mean controlling it. We can't control other people, circumstances, or what tomorrow brings. We can only control what we bring to the day.

Be willing. 
Try again. Learn. Change. Apologise. Listen. Admit that you don't have all the answers. Stay teachable. If you're willing, everything can improve.

Be able.
Look at what's within your reach instead of becoming consumed by what isn't. You may not be able to change the situation, but you can change your response. You may not be able to fix everything, but you can do the next right thing.

Be accountable.
Other people may be responsible for what they've done to you, but you're responsible for what you do with it. You can be hurt without becoming hateful. You can be disappointed without becoming bitter. Someone else's behaviour doesn't have to determine yours.

Be grateful.
Not because everything is perfect, but because something is still good. Notice the coffee, the conversation, the familiar voice, the meal on the table, the person who checks in, the sunset you nearly missed. Much of life's goodness is ordinary, and ordinary blessings are still blessings.

Do good.
Do it now. Not when life is easier. Not when you have more money, more time, or fewer problems. Say the kind word. Make the call. Help someone. Listen. Forgive where you can. Be patient. Make another person's day a little lighter. Most importantly, do good to the people who are with you now.

It's easy to spend our lives thinking about the people who hurt us, disappointed us, or walked away while overlooking the people who are still standing beside us. We can spend so much time arguing with the past that we miss the present.

Life is happening now. Live it. And live it well.

What is Stored in your Storehouse?

I've been thinking about the things we carry inside us. The things nobody can see until, usually at the most inconvenient moment, they find their way out. Anger, frustration, bitterness, envy, spite, resentment, jealousy, pride, suspicion, unforgiveness, disappointment, hatred, impatience, guilt, and shame. Even the need to be right, to be recognised, to be understood, or to make someone else realise just how badly they've hurt us. We all have our list, and some of us have been adding to it for years.

The heart is a storehouse. We put things in there, some deliberately and others almost without noticing. A hurtful remark, a betrayal, a disappointment, something someone did to us that we simply can't forget. Because it hurt, we keep it. We tell ourselves we keep it because it matters, because we need to remember, or because remembering will protect us from allowing the same thing to happen again. But there's a difference between remembering something and carrying it.

I know this because I've spent a great deal of time looking backwards. I've replayed things that happened years ago, wondered what I could've said differently, what I should've done, why someone behaved as they did, and whether I could somehow have changed the outcome. The mind's remarkably creative when it's given an old wound to work on. It can return to the same conversation hundreds of times and produce a different ending every time. Of course, none of those endings changes what actually happened.

Perhaps you know what I mean. Someone hurts you, and the hurt's real. You're angry. You're disappointed. You may even have every reason to be angry and disappointed. But then something happens that we don't always notice. The person who hurt you goes on living. They get up the next morning, have their coffee, go to work, make plans, laugh with their friends, and continue with their lives. Meanwhile, you're still carrying something they may not even remember doing.

They may've forgotten the words they said. They may've forgotten the incident altogether. They may not even know that you're still having conversations with them in your head. Yet they've taken up residence in your storehouse, and you continue to give them space there.

That's where we need to pause. Someone else may be responsible for what they did to you, but they can't be responsible for everything you allow that experience to become within you. They may've caused the wound, but they didn't necessarily put the bitterness there. They may've disappointed you, but they didn't necessarily put the resentment there. They may've treated you badly, but at some point, you have to ask yourself what you're doing with what they did.

That's not an easy question because it gives some responsibility back to us. It's much easier to say, "I'm angry because of what they did." And perhaps that's true. But how long will you remain angry? How many times will you tell the story? How many years will you carry the same disappointment? How much of your present life are you willing to give to something that happened in your past?

I'm not suggesting that we simply forget. Some things can't be forgotten, and perhaps they shouldn't be. There are lessons in what happens to us. There are boundaries we learn to establish. There are people we learn not to trust again. Experiences change us permanently. Forgiveness doesn't mean pretending that something didn't happen, and it certainly doesn't mean allowing someone who hurt you to hurt you again.

Perhaps forgiveness is simply deciding that you're no longer willing to carry the weight of what someone else did.

And this is where the storehouse becomes important. What have you stored in yours? Have you stored the lesson, or the anger? The wisdom, or the bitterness? The experience, or the resentment? Have you kept what happened because it helped you grow, or because some part of you is still waiting for the person who hurt you to understand what they did?

There's a difference.

There comes a time when we have to clean out the storehouse. What happened mattered, but our lives also matter. We can't change what someone else did. We can't go back and remove the words, undo the betrayal, prevent the disappointment, or make another person behave differently. What we can do is decide what we'll allow to remain inside us.

That's where the choice begins.

I can be hurt without becoming hateful. I can be disappointed without becoming bitter. I can be angry without making anger my identity. I can recognise someone's wrongdoing without allowing their wrongdoing to determine who I become. I can acknowledge that something was unfair without spending the rest of my life trying to make the scales balance.

And perhaps most importantly, I can stop giving permanent residence to people who should've been temporary visitors in my life.

That doesn't happen overnight. I know that. We all have our cycles. Some days we think we've finally let something go, only to discover that it's still sitting quietly somewhere inside us. We open a door we thought we'd closed, and there it is again. That doesn't necessarily mean that we've failed. It simply means that there's more work to do.

I'm learning that healing isn't always about removing the past. Sometimes it's about changing the space the past occupies. The chapter remains, but it doesn't have to be the chapter I keep reading. What happened can remain part of my story without it becoming the whole story.

So perhaps the question we should ask ourselves isn't only, "Who hurt me?" and not even, "Why did they do it?". The quieter take on it is to ask, "What have I allowed that hurt to become inside me?"

There's a strange freedom in realising that I don't have to keep everything that's happened to me. Some things can be acknowledged and released. Some things can be forgiven. Some things can simply be put down. And some things can be turned into wisdom and left behind.

We all have a storehouse. We all put things into it. We are all responsible for what we choose to keep there. Eventually, what we store inside us finds its way out. It appears in our words, our reactions, our relationships, and in the way we see other people.

It's good to open the door every now and then and have a good look around. There may be things in there that once protected us but no longer serve us. There may be things we've carried for so long that we've forgotten we're carrying them. And there may be things we're finally ready to put down.

I'm learning that I don't have to carry yesterday simply because I lived it. I can keep the lesson. I can keep the memory. I can keep the wisdom. But I don't have to keep the poison.

The most important thing is that we heal from the past. Healing is not about forgetting what happened and pretending it didn't hurt. Healing is finally deciding that what happened won't have the final say in what happens within us.

Service is not Weakness

In South Africa, we live with the assumption that the system will cope, that the country will cope, and that whatever is strained, whatever is broken, whatever is slowly falling out of alignment, will simply be carried, absorbed, and endured.

And so it does, until it doesn’t.

We see it in the pressure on roads, hospitals, schools, and institutions that are expected to carry more than they were built for. We see it in communities constantly adjusting, constantly finding workarounds, constantly building personal solutions to problems that should not have been left to individuals in the first place. And now, more visibly than before, we see it in people who have lived here for years (who built lives here, worked here, raised families here,) being sent away, packed up, moved on, as though belonging was always temporary, even when life itself was not.

And it raises an uncomfortable question: what does it say about us when belonging becomes conditional only after time has been given, labour has been offered, and life has already taken root?

When a country begins to treat permanence as uncertain (not only in systems, but in people), it reveals something deeper about how stability itself is being understood. Not just who is included or excluded in a moment, but what kind of idea of “home” is being protected at all.

It is not only leaders who shape this. It sits in policy, enforcement, public reaction, and in a wider culture that has grown used to the idea that South Africa will simply absorb pressure without needing to redefine itself.

And in that assumption, something changes.

Responsibility becomes easier to postpone. Standards become easier to bend. What should be consistent becomes conditional. And what should be firm becomes flexible depending on circumstance.

So people begin, quietly, to adjust not to what they believe is right, but to what they believe will still function under strain.

For many, this becomes the lived experience of the country itself: a place that is always managing, always coping, always adapting, but less and less often insisting on what it should be.

And then, even resilience starts to change meaning. What once looked like strength can begin to look like endurance without direction. What once looked like adaptability can begin to look like quiet acceptance of instability.

What also sits quietly underneath all of this is the question of money (not in abstract terms, but in very real ones). The money that is taken from taxpayers, from people who work and contribute every month, is not symbolic. It is responsibility in financial form.

And the expectation is simple: that it is used for the public good. For infrastructure, for services, for the systems that hold everyday life together. Not lost through inefficiency, mismanagement, or diverted into private benefit.

Because when that link between contribution and care is weakened, trust weakens with it. People begin to feel that they are paying into something that is no longer being fully returned to them in the form of functioning public systems.

And over time, that too becomes part of the normal landscape, not as a single moment of failure, but as an ongoing condition.

Yet beneath all of it, the same question remains: is a country defined by how much it can absorb or by what it refuses to accept as normal? Because what becomes normal eventually becomes identity.

And so we return to the question at the heart of it all: what is it that we really need to make us stand out as a nation?

Is it a World Cup, a moment of global attention, pride, and visibility that shines brightly and then passes? Or is it something far more difficult to build: a world-class nation?

A country where service is not occasional, but constant. Where systems work not because they are under the spotlight, but because they are maintained. Where leadership is not measured by performance in moments of attention, but by consistency in moments of pressure. Where people do not have to work around failure, because failure is not allowed to become normal.

A World Cup can make a country seen, but only standards, kept over time, can make it respected.

A world-class nation is what we become in what we choose to tolerate, what we choose to fix, and what we refuse to let define us.

For tomorrow’s leader, the message is simple: lead in a way that leaves less damage than you found, more trust than you used, and a country more stable than the one you inherited.

Because power is never neutral. It always moves a country somewhere. The only question is whether it moves it toward strength or toward exhaustion.

Service is not weakness. It is the highest form of leadership, the quiet discipline of choosing responsibility over advantage, and people over position.

Quiet Revelations

There’s something deeply human about the way we try to make sense of change. We reach for images and stories, because the real thing is often too heavy to hold all at once.

Gold is one of those stories.

It’s never found already perfect. It begins hidden in rock, mixed with everything it’s not. And before it ever becomes something valuable, it has to be broken open. Then comes fire — not once, but often more than once — until what doesn’t belong slowly falls away.

What’s left isn’t something new. It’s something true. Something that was always there, just uncovered.

Life can feel a lot like that. Not always gentle. Not always clear. 

During the storms of life, it’s easy to think things are falling apart. But sometimes, what’s actually happening is a quiet kind of revealing.

Like a real storm that reveals what is unstable and weak, the difficulties we experience reveal what can’t hold in our lives. These things begin to loosen. What was built on fear, habit, or just survival starts to fall away. And underneath it all, something more honest begins to surface.

We often think strength is something we carefully build — through effort, discipline, and time. And yes, that’s part of it. But there’s another kind of strength too. The kind that only shows itself when life presses in, and there’s nowhere to hide. 

Like carbon becoming diamond under pressure, it isn’t something added. It’s something revealed.

Fire doesn’t create gold. It refines it.

Pressure and storms don’t create strength. They reveal what was already there.

Scripture speaks about this.

In 1 Peter 1:6–7 (NIV), faith is described as something refined through fire — not to destroy it, but to purify it, like gold: “These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire…”

In Isaiah 43:2 (NIV), the promise isn’t that we won’t pass through deep waters, but that we won’t pass through them alone: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.”

And in Romans 5:3–4 (NIV), even suffering is not wasted — it becomes part of a slow shaping that forms endurance, character, and eventually, hope: “Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

None of this denies how hard life can feel. Some seasons are heavy. Some days feel like too much. And it’s okay to be honest about that.

But not everything that feels like breaking is loss. Sometimes it’s making space. A gentle stripping away of what can’t stay. A quiet removal of what was never meant to carry you forward.

And when the storm passes, you don’t come out unchanged. Something has shifted. Something unnecessary has fallen away. And something deeper — something steadier, more honest, more anchored — has been gently revealed.

Don’t let the world convince you that any form of trial is the end of you. Life will knock you down, again and again. But if you can learn to see what the trial is shaping rather than only what it is taking, you won’t stay down as long as you think you will.

Because whatever you are experiencing, God is not absent. You are not alone. 

You are not being undone. You are being formed.

Living with the Decision

We make countless decisions every day, often without even realising it. Even the ones we make consciously don’t always come with clarity. There is no sign, no guarantee that the choice we make is the “right” one. The opportunity is there, and we have to decide: take it, or leave it. 

And yet, we like to think there’s a right choice. Most of the time, there isn’t. We choose with what we know, shaped by past experiences, and with who we are in that moment. Often, the quick choice we make is guided more by emotion than by reason. 

This is why the real work begins only after the choice is made. We have to live with it, without constantly circling back to the one we didn’t take. Peace doesn’t come from making the “perfect” decision. It comes from settling into what is. 

Abraham was seventy-five years old when God called him to leave everything familiar – his home, his family, his country. He had no knowledge of what lay ahead. Yet, he stepped forward, trusting God’s promise of a land, a people, and a future he could not yet see. 

“The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go… to the land I will show you.’ So Abram went…” – Genesis 12:1,4 (NIV) 

He didn’t wait for clarity. He didn’t divide himself between staying and leaving. He chose obedience and moved. 

Isaac faced a different kind of test. Famine came, and it would have been natural to leave the land God had promised. But God told him to stay, to plant and settle, to trust without immediate reward. 

“Stay in this land for a while, and I will be with you and will bless you.” – Genesis 26:3 (NIV) 

So, he stayed. He dug wells, built altars, and lived faithfully where he was planted. Nothing dramatic at first. No immediate signs of prosperity. Just trust and steady presence, and in time, God’s blessing followed. 

Then there’s Ruth, a widow in a foreign land. She could have returned to her family, to security, to familiarity. Instead, she stayed with Naomi, her mother-in-law, choosing loyalty and love over comfort or certainty. 

“Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay; your people will be my people and your God my God.” – Ruth 1:16 (NIV) 

Her choice wasn’t about a place, but about the person she committed to, the life she chose to invest in. And once made, she didn’t waver, or stand divided between two lives. 

This is the pattern. Not one path over another, but the posture within it. Each of these Bible characters chose, and then lived fully inside that choice. 

These experiences that have been written in the Bible are given to us as an example. Today, God doesn’t speak in ways we can hear, and many people don’t believe in signs. But I believe that God is in control. When things fall into place, when circumstances align in a way that feels right and fair, it was meant to be. 

Here’s my own story as an example. 

I remember saying for many years that I needed to prioritise my health and resign from the teaching position I was holding. But I didn’t want to just leave. I needed a sign. I needed God to show me the way. So, I stayed. 

My health deteriorated, and still I stayed. There was nothing that clearly indicated it was time to stop teaching. People advised me. Friends guided me. Family supported me. Yet, I wasn’t comfortable with leaving before the time was right. 

I prayed often. I asked God to give me patience, to help me choose the right moment. And then I continued, even in ill health, to teach. 

By 11:00, my strength was gone. I could no longer function as I should. School only ended at 13:30, and the hours stretched endlessly. 

One day, I was standing by the cupboard in my classroom, searching for important documents. As I had done so many times before, I quietly said, “I can’t do this anymore.” And then, something shifted. A sense of relief came over me. I stepped back, looked again, and there they were. The documents. Right in front of me, as if they had just been placed there. I looked up and thanked God. I walked to the office and told the principal I was done. I left on sick leave immediately. From there, the process began and long sick leave became early retirement. 

Unfortunately, it didn’t happen without problems. I waited patiently for the Department of Education to contact me. Three months passed, and still nothing was happening. When I phoned the department to follow up, I was told I could return to school. 

I was so confused. I soon learned that my documents for long sick leave and early retirement had been filed incorrectly. Instead, I had been placed on long-COVID leave. I explained my situation again. I was then told that I would have to see different specialists again for all the tests already done, to confirm I was truly unfit for teaching. 

I couldn’t understand why I had to go through all the tests again. It took another eight months of doctor visits, tests, and document submissions before the department was finally satisfied. At last, early retirement seemed possible. 

And then, unexpectedly, my brother died. He and my mother had been living with us for almost 8 years. After his funeral, my mother moved to Langebaan to live with my sister. 

I waited another four months before my early retirement was approved. 

Of course, my brother’s death opened the door for my move to Langebaan. It wasn’t my first choice, but it became the only choice. My husband and children agreed that we could move as a family to the Western Cape so that I could be near my mother. This gave me a sense of purpose to move across the country. 

What I’ve learned over the years is that it’s not just about opportunity. It’s about accepting the choice once it is made. That’s where calm is found. Not in avoiding consequences, or knowing the future, but in refusing to live divided – half in the present, half in the imagined alternative. 

Go, and go fully. Stay, and stay fully.