My new blog

Some of you may wonder why I changed blogging from my old site  (familydelange) to this blog?  The main reason for this is that the old blog was meant for the de Lange family to use and was especially created during my dad’s heart attack so that everyone would be able to follow what was happening to him and how God healed him.  This new blog is for my own personal comments and experiences with Abby and Josh too of course.  I hope that explains the reasons why this blog looks so ‘new’ and what it is now being used by me.

Cyber bullying

Watching the television coverage of bullying in school and just how bad it has become, highlights to me just how much responsibility we as parents have given over to others to manage in terms of raising our children as responsible accountable children.  The epitome of a weak mind to me must be the person who spends their hours harassing others on the Internet through repeated bullying in chat rooms/tools, SMS and email.  Cyber bullying is easy, it is easy because the perpetrator can hide behind technology and basically type what they like, oblivious to the pain and damage they cause.  Worse is how these people draw their friends into an attacking mob who cheer on the bully and jeer at his or her victim.  As parents this is where we fail! It is OUR responsibility to teach our children to stand up for those who battle to stand up for themselves, instead of victimizing them.  Even though it may not seem ‘cool’ to do in this twisted world we live in, our children should know that it is the right to do and that they CANNOT even consider a compromise.  Our social fabric of adulthood is determined by what we learn as children in word AND action, not only how our actions affect ourselves, but also how it affects others.  Stopping bullies is a group action, not only a single person’s responsibility, or worse the victim’s responsibility.  Stopping those who are socially inept and immature must be a team effort, friends supporting friends, children redefining ‘cool’ to support others, instead of victimizing them.  As parents, we must start here and change our children one by one to stop supporting these bullies and start supporting their victims strongly and unwavering!

Being ready, living ready

Mat 24:36 to 51
So often when we read this portion of Scripture we focus on the bad types in Noah’s time who will come to a sticky end when Christ returns.  We often preach this chapter to unsaved folks to encourage them to come to Jesus and be saved, and it is fine that we do this, that we share this with others in that context.

Lately in the past year of my life, I have been struck with the other part of this chapter, the part that calls us as Christians to account. I have been challenged by business people to split my life in two, Christianity for my private life only, and to keep it out of business life, that the two don’t mix, and that we offend when we do make them one.
I have been challenged by my personal life, having lost everything after feeling forced to resign from that business and living under the shame of failure and loss, to reject silence and attack those who made my life miserable.
I have felt tremendously challenged in my home life, when under such stress and depression, I feel like lashing out at my family and making them bare the brunt of my frustrations.

Verse 42 – ‘So stay awake, alert. You have no idea what day your Master will show up.’ Verse 46 – ‘Someone the Master can drop in on unannounced and always find him doing his job. A God-blessed man or woman, I tell you.’

It was this scripture that put everything into such clear light for me.  Christ will come and He will find us where He finds us.  We need to ensure we are found being Christians, living Christian, and not just talking it.  I am so challenged by this because my life needs me to change, to live Christianity and not just speak it, to live the Word and not just mouth the Word.  I am challenged to live with more compassion, with less thought of myself, my pride, and more thought of others, of who they are and what they need.  True compassion is a tough call because it means truly dying unto yourself, your assumptions, your views, your opinions, and to accept others for who they are without judgement and without prejudice.

I have to focus on dying unto myself, as this is the only way I can live again.  Christ through me, 100% or nothing.  For me I need to be in that place, with those people, and speaking those words, when Christ comes.  It is more important to me now than ever before, living my life within God’s will and being that person the Master can depend on.

First whale sighting of the season for me!

This morning during an epic winter storm I sighted my first whale of the season (2009) just off the Dolphin Beach in Blaauwberg. Great, as this is always a sign of spring being around the corner for me. Southern Right Whales are pretty amazing to watch, and along with the Humpback Whale, and various types of dolphin, the animals I look for with great eagerness. Another old favorite are the sharks that used to amble by the beach in years, past though I have not seen them much lately. Akin to the majestic whale sharks, these sharks were smaller plankton eaters that used to cruise past the rocks just off Small Bay in Blaauwberg. I wonder if they still do after all the changes in the environment we see?

Eljane died today…

My aunt died today, suddenly and so seemingly without reason. She went to hospital (N1 City) to have something checked, a scope was to be used, not even a operation, and suddenly she was dead.
Initially I was so stunned, I could not truly fathom my sense of the whole incident and it reminded me of the death of a brother-in-law years ago, also very suddenly, one battled to find some calming answer to all the questions starting with ‘why’ that milled around in your mind.
My aunt was diagnosed with lung cancer so the tests were all related to checking on the status of the newly discovered growths within her body. Somehow she ended up bleeding to death whilst under examination, and we may never know exactly how that came about either. However the thing that finally caught up to me about this sad sad event is that she died suddenly, without pain, without suffering. Setting that kind of departure from this life against what could have been had she battled lung cancer for years, and I have to say it may have been better so. Better still if she was healthy and still with us, but IF she had to go, better so quietly, without pain and suffering, passing through to where Christ was waiting with ouma (her mom) at His side, and hopefully some lekker soet koekies and vetkoek too, just to make that welcome even sweeter. There in lies my consolation, that she died without the pain and suffering lung cancer would have wrought from her, and that she saw Christ immediately, Who must have laid on the biggest angel party to welcome her home!

Who was Harry Patch?

Harry Patch, 111 years old, the oldest surviving British World War 1 veteran, has died on the 25th of July 2009. May he and his fellow heroes be long honoured and never forgotten.

A quote from him, taken from this amazing piece about him in The Telegraph, shares the following of the horror and wonder he experienced during the war to end all wars: “As his unit came across a member of the regiment lying in a pool of blood, ripped open from shoulder to waist, the man said: “Shoot me”. But before anyone could draw a revolver, the man died with the word “Mother” on his lips. “It was a cry of suprise and joy,” recalled Patch, “and I’ll always remember that death is not the end”.”

What an amazing thing to say in the midst of such human terror!  I read further that Harry Patch was always vocal about the horror of war, and so someone should be.  There are NO winners with a war, never, no matter what propaganda wants us to believe.

Reading about his stories from his experiences remind me of the war we fought on the Namibia / Botswana border (grens oorlog) and makes me wonder if those who kept that war going have ever stopped to count the lives it cost them to have enriched themselves from it so.  Now we know looking back that the ‘rooi gevaar’ (Communist) threat was a very small part of the whole in that war, and yet it was held as the reason for the deaths of so many sons, brothers and fathers over the years the war kept dragging on.  Today we know that millions were made by an elect few from that war, which was always about diamonds and oil, and very little to do with ‘defending our homeland’.   Today I see their families walk about freely in my country and I’m amazed how so many of them have become aloof to reality, so immersed are they in their heritage and inheritance.

So for me war is a non-option, a threat that makes no sense when you are the oppressor, the attacker, the aggressar.  For those who must defend themselves and others, as Harry Patch had to, for them I pray STRENGTH, HOPE AND VICTORY!

Every time you’re staring up at the Milkyway ever wonder who may be staring back?

I found this amazing library of images on one of NASA’s many websites and they feature photos taken by crew and systems orbiting Earth. Just beautiful!

The Lonnie Frisbee movie…

I see on Facebook there are several groups to Lonnie’s memory and one to honor the documentary on his life.  I was a young teenager when he traveled to South Africa with John Wimber.  I remember how God moved through those meetings like a wild fire and it was one of those clear memories of my Christian life I will never forget.

God used both John and the team, and Lonnie was a part of that, but it was God who used these vessels, even Lonnie, as broken as he was.  The problem I have with glorifying the man is that we often get distracted by.. well, the man, instead of seeing what God had been doing.  Lonnie was a deeply flawed character and he chose his own way over God’s in the end.  That’s tremendously sad because I believe he had a fantastic life ahead in Christ.

The battle he had was the same we all have, a battle with our old selves, where the person within has not fully died to Christ and wishes to impose selfish urges, desires and choices on us.  When we truly come to Christ we must die to ourselves, and as Paul states we need to do this as a daily exercise.  So my hope is that we as Christians will seek Christ as our example and follow hard after him.  Let’s look at those who were true to their calling, like John Wimber himself, and cheer them on in the race of life, as it is to them that we should look.  Paul says ‘follow me as I follow Christ’ meaning that he, like John Wimber, set the example for us and that we should do as they did, follow hard after Christ despite of ourselves.

I do not care that Lonnie is not prominently mentioned in the Calvary Chapel or Vineyard church histories, because his was not the reason for their existence, Christ is.  So on Facebook I’m a fan of Christ and of no other!  I look to Him and Him alone and the vessels he uses and used over the years, and who were faithful I look to for examples in life, but to those who failed themselves in service of our King I will pray for, knowing that God in His great mercy and grace can forgive these failures if they turn to Him.

A mysterious object hits Jupiter and leaves its mark!

Something about the size of earth may have caused the latest mark on Jupiter’s surface, when it hit Jupiter sometime last week. Thanks to an amateur astronomer the world now knows about this latest scar on Jupiter.

Interesting that scientists believe this earth sized object was too feint during its approach for us to have seen.  It kinda concerns you when you realize just how large an object this was estimated to have been.  This said I do not believe that we should panic about such objects flying through our solar system undetected, because this specific culprit hit a gas planet to leave this mark.  It therefore did not need to have major mass in my opinion to have done this to Jupiter.  Still it is pretty impressive to see the visible evidence of the impact so clearly and large on the surface.

This image is linked to CNN where I got the image from and where the article that alerted me to the story is hosted.  Please click through and read more details about this fantastic event.

More astronomy news – remember Mars is closer than it will be for years to come and you may just be hit by a nice eclipse of the sun when the Moon obscures it on July the 22nd.  Nothing like astronomical events to remind us just how small the ‘issues’ in our lives really are.

Henry Allingham has died at 113 years of age…

Don’t know who that is?  One of the founding members of the RAF (Royal Naval Air Service) and the oldest surviving serviceman from World War 1.  I write this post not so much to only honor Henry, as I never knew him personally, but rather to honor the men and woman who like him put honor and valour first, and stepped up to defend the freedom we all enjoy today.

Living in the UK the past 8 years left me shocked at how badly these men and women, survivors of two of the worst wars in history, are treated these days.  We have so little appreciation for what they did for us, and I for one am fed-up about that.  Many died during those wars, young men who fought the enemy almost straight out of school.  Their lives were offered up to defend the freedom the West enjoys today, and it angers me that we treat them poorly as so many of us do.  I tend to have more on WWII than WWI so forgive me if this post spends too much time on the second World War, as Henry fought in the first of course. Even though WWI was the war to end all wars, it ended up being the precursor to WWII, an even worse experience for many I think.

Those who survived returned home without speaking much about the horrors they experienced in those wars.  It is difficult to share the experience they must have had in the trenches of WWI and WWII, though I often try my hand at the XBOX Brother in Arms series to try and share some of that experience.  This game series specifically helped me in some way to understand the absolute chaos of war during those years, the inaccuracy of weapons, the fear tanks wrought in the hearts of those manning the trenches, and the incredible price that was payed for each street the Allied forces won from the Germans in WWII.  It was based on the experiences of Allied forces during the invasion after D-day, and it is the closest I have come to knowing just an inkling of what my grandfathers must have experienced in real life.

So Henry, a rather belated thank you from this South African.   Here’s to surviving the air battles, the mustard gas, the muddied trenches and the thanklessness of generations there after!  For those of us who still care about your generation and the one there after, we salute you!

And that’s the way it is…

I pay tribute to a great man who just passed away, Walter Cronkite, one of the most trusted journalists on US television. I think for many years as a South African, his voice was my association with US television, and I remember distinctly hearing him be the voice that brought some of the saddest news about happenings in the US and Vietnam to the world, though I heard these snippets in recordings of course. Sad to see him pass away, but celebrating the fact that the world had him as part of our community for 92 years. One often yearns back to the days where journalists had more depth, more opinions of their own, more clarity on the facts they pursued, ‘and that’s the way it was’ with Walter Cronkite!