Lent Day 7: 'Elizabeth'

 

I delivered the following message in chapel this week:

When I was a Grade 8 in high school I decided to try out rhythmic gymnastics. My mom had been a gymnast and in all my homesickness at boarding school I thought that attempting to do a sport she loved so much, and was so good at, might help me to connect with her while counting down the hours before I could actually go home and be reunited with her.

As I have told many of you I could write a book on homesickness and the punch in the gut feeling of having to return to boarding school on a Sunday night.

So I threw myself into new challenges to try and combat my intense loneliness and one of those was attempting rhythmic gym.

I can still picture the moment in the school hall, the sunlight streaming in through the glass windows onto the warm wooden floor. All the other girls who had done gymnastics from basically the moment they were born were all ‘warming up’ by sitting in the splits and contorting themselves into circles on the floor. It was at that moment when I realised that rhythmic gym was probably not for me.

And then our coach, Elizabeth, came in. She was a grade 10 girl with the warmest smile on her face and she was just so very kind.

While all the other girls flick flacked and did arab springs Elizabeth gently tried to help me touch my toes. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I’ve got pretty long legs. There is no chance that I have ever been able to touch my toes. But she kindly helped me and used words of affirmation to try and summon even the vaguest gymnastic ability in me. It didn’t work and that became my first and last gymnastics lesson ever.

But what it did do was give me hope that I would survive high school because a senior girl had been kind to me, had shown me compassion when I was really lonely and sad and had tried to help me with something I was clearly terrible at, but she also didn’t give up on me.

Two years later Elizabeth became head girl of our school. And you can bet that I voted for her. She led us with a gentle grace and kindness which are two qualities that are synonymous with her. She earned my respect because she respected me first. And she reflected the face of Christ to me which very few teenagers are prepared to do in high school even if they call themselves Christians.

Fast forward several years and it was my 21^st birthday. At this point I was studying at Rhodes University and my social group was from all over the place. A friend asked if he could bring one of his mates, Duncan, along to my party. This stranger, Duncan, was from Pietermaritzburg and when I heard his surname I immediately said he was welcome to come to my party – he was Elizabeth’s brother. I knew that he had to be a good guy because his sister was one of my favourite people from high school.

Duncan and I became friends and fast forward several more years and I was about to move to Johannesburg. He and I bumped into each other at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown just before I moved to Johannesburg and he promised to introduce me to some of his ‘cool’ friends when I moved up.  True to his word a few weeks after moving to Johannesburg he invited me to dinner at his friend, ‘Steve’s’ house. What I didn’t know then was he was actually introducing me to my future husband. That dinner at ‘Steve’s house turned out to be a pivotal moment in my life where my life trajectory turned 180 degrees and I found my soul mate and I started planning a life with him

On our wedding day Elizabeth was there and Duncan was one our grooms men.

Two years later Elizabeth dedicated my son Gray to Jesus and three years later she did the same for Eva. She is their Godmother in so many incredibly special ways.

And two years after that we miraculously found ourselves neighbours to Elizabeth and her family during Covid and I can honestly say that if it hadn’t been for them becoming our ‘lockdown family’ I’m not sure how we would have survived the isolation and trauma of that time.

I realise this is a very long winded story about how my life turned out but this is the crux of the message I want to give to you all today.

If a grade 10 girl hadn’t shown me the grace of God in one abysmal session of rhythmic gym I would not have invited her brother to my 21^st, I would not have met Stephen, I would not have had Gray and Eva, I would not have survived the Covid lockdown. My life would have turned out very differently.

What you do now and how you treat people now will have an echo over the rest of your life. The way you treat one grade 8 boy for an hour of your life now may or may not lead to you meeting your life partner one day, or it may or may not be the reason their high school experience is either positive or negative.

God has an incredible way of weaving people in and out of your life for a reason. I want every one of you to be the reason someone feels loved, encouraged, worthy of respect and brave. If the way we treat those around us makes someone feel worse about themselves then we are not being Christlike. And even if you struggle with the concept of Christ I am sure every single one of you would like to be remembered as someone who led by example, who showed compassion, who forgave easily, who was worthy of respect because of what you did for others rather than what you demanded from others.

Jesus, the son of God, creator of the universe, had every reason to flex. But he didn’t. instead he said ‘No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing: but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you’ (John 15:15).

If the creator of the universe can humble himself to call human beings friends then surely we can do the same? If he is prepared to share all he has heard from God with us, thus making us his equals, surely we can do the same?

If Jesus calls all of us to be his friends – regardless of who we are, what we look like, what culture we belong to, who our family is, what our strengths and our weaknesses are – surely we can do the same?

This I can guarantee all of you the seeds you plant now will bare fruit later, how you treat your fellow human being now will echo for the rest of your lives.

I often ask my matrics what senior had the profoundest effect on them when they were in Grade 8. It is astounding to say that many of my matrics, over a decade of boys, will more often than not say that the senior who had the biggest effect on their Grade 8 lives was the matric who was at the bottom of the pecking order. The matric boy who wasn’t anywhere near being a prefect, or a main oke, or a first team rugby player. It was the matric who knew how it felt to be insignificant. And it because of this that that matric treated everyone – from grade 8 to 12 – with respect and dignity thus earning him the respect and dignity of those around him.

My greatest prayer for this school is that in the years to come, when I ask my matrics this question, every single one of your names will be mentioned by someone. That every single one of you here will learn to humble yourselves and treat the lowest of the low with dignity. Because in doing that you elevate an entire school and suddenly the world in which you live will become a whole lot more heavenly.

Please remember that Jesus chose his leaders from the lowly, the menial, the uneducated. What we consider status means nothing unless we lead with compassion, wisdom and selflessness.

It doesn’t matter if your name never reaches an honours board, what matters is if your name gets remembered in the hearts of those around you. God’s plans for your life are already at work, and like me meeting my dear friend Elizabeth in Grade 8, your destiny is already unfolding before you, you just don’t know it yet.