26 1972 – 1989: Family Life between work and church.

26 <> 1972 – 1989: Family Life between work and church.

One thing about life, as a boss of mine used to say, is that “Everything is difficult and nothing lasts forever!” so I like this saying from the Bible which keeps me reminded that all things are going to change one day and if things are tough today, I must just wait for things to change, and if things are nice today I must still be prepared to accept change when it comes.

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” For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.”

Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, verses 1 to 8. from the American Standard Version.

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Sharing the time between work, church and family was complex. I have said before that, though I do not regret the time I spent — and still spend — in the work of the Gospel, I am sorry that  DorothyAnne and the children had to bear the brunt of it. With a husband and father who was out so many nights of the week and preoccupied a lot of the time, even while with them, with preparation for Bible study, preaching and meetings, it could not have been easy. We Christians have much help and guidance from the Bible and yet not all injunctions of Scripture are in view at the same time. Today, one aspect provides the motivating force, tomorrow another, but then that is life — as the Teacher says in the quotation from Ecclesiastes above. At that time I had to respond to the Great Commission, “Go you therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, see, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”

That was what I wanted to do, but it didn’t take into account what  DorothyAnne might have wanted to do, something that I did not understand (or was unwilling to face?) until that day when  DorothyAnne said to me: “I didn’t marry a Minister!” — which was, of course, true. That did pull me up sharp. There really seemed no solution to it — either I did what I wanted and she suffered from my neglect of her, or I didn’t do what I wanted and she suffered from guilty feelings.

In 1984  DorothyAnne and I ‘hid away’ from the Assemblies of God, which we had joined upon returning to Cape Town and where I had been actively involved, and spent a year at St. Luke’s Anglican Church in Diep River, a year in which I had minimal involvement in ministry and which gave us time to restore our relationship in the home. Afterwards when we returned to the Assembly at Muizenberg, I had a lesser involvement which gave me more time to be with  DorothyAnne, and with Suzanne and Timothy until they each in turn left home (Andrew and Jenny had finished school and gone out ‘into the world’ by then). I continued with the ‘lesser involvement’ and later, back at Constantia Assembly, declined to resume a place among the Elders and, eventually we went back to Harfield Road Assembly where I continued in a ‘back seat’.

The lesson I was starting to learn was that even when answering the call of the Gospel the important relationship is in the home between husband and wife, and the New Testament recognises this in the words of Paul the Apostle recorded for us in 1 Corinthians, chapter 7, verses 32 to 35:-

“But I would have you to be free from cares. He that is unmarried is careful for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married is careful for the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and is divided. So also the woman that is unmarried and the virgin is careful for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married is careful for the things of the world, how she may please her husband. And this I say for your own profit; not that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is seemly, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction.”

That is not an indictment of the married state, it is simply the way things are in a world ordered by God.  DorothyAnne didn’t marry a minister. It was up to me to find a way to follow the call of the Gospel, but not at her expense. Did I find the way? — well, God never asks anyone to do something without providing the way, so I think yes, I found it by accepting that, for one reason and another, ‘the time’ for involvement in meetings and fellowships was over for me and that I could settle down to a life of reading and writing on Christian themes in booklets, in letters, by e-mail, and on web sites on the Internet. I love  DorothyAnne very much, and her unwavering love for me, expressed in that poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning which  DorothyAnne had pasted in the book she gave me for our first Anniversary in 1958, has carried us all the way.