On The Way - Chapel Service

 

1 KINGS 19 11 - 13

Sometimes we find ourselves a long way from home. Sometimes it’s a geographical distance. Everything is unfamiliar – the food, the culture, the climate, the clothing, the people. And sometimes we can feel a long way from home in our hearts – even though we are surrounded by those who are familiar to us and who love us.

Today I want to talk about a time in my life when I was a very long way from home, both geographically and emotionally.

15 years ago I was a graduate unable to find a job. I also found myself in a massive crisis about the direction in which my life was heading, or in this case, not heading.

I had met my future husband, Stephen, and although I knew he was the man God had chosen for me I was at war with myself and with a future I was so uncertain about. And I wanted to run away from it all. I was depressed, anxious and terrified. And I am sure that some grade 8s might chose similar words to describe how they have felt in the past two weeks.

It was during this time of flux that I received a job offer from a school in Muscat, Oman, which is in the Middle East. As the locum teaching position I had been filling was about to end and I was again staring down the barrel of unemployment, I took the job. All I knew was that the school was owned by a South African woman and that I would be teaching adults English.

Having barely googled where Muscat, Oman is on a map I set off into the great unknown, alone, ostensibly running away from having to make any major decisions about my life.

What I didn’t know was that I would be teaching employees of the Royal Army of Oman and that my first class of students would be predominantly army generals. To say that I was intimidated would be an understatement. It was while I was teaching this particular class that the Arab Spring broke out across the Middle East. The Arab Spring was a wave of pro-democracy protests and uprisings that began in Tunisia. Driven by grievances over corruption, economic hardships, and authoritarian rule, the movement spread across the Middle East and North Africa. It successfully toppled leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, but often resulted in severe instability, civil wars, and increased repression.

All  ex pats living in Oman were on high alert during this time and we had regular contact with the South African embassy in case we needed to be evacuated. It was however, also during this time of major civil unrest, that my boss’s Omani business partner got black listed by the government and I was therefore unable to get a work Visa. I was ostensibly working illegally, during a potential civil war, in one of the most militarised countries in the world, and I was teaching its Army generals, who did not like me very much.

Apart from the major challenges in the classroom I also realised that being a single woman in a very conservative country is very different to being one in South Africa.  An example of this would be the fact that when I arrived at my new apartment I decided to walk around the block to get a sense of the neighbourhood, which was a very nice, middle-class neighbourhood. During my walk around the block three different men stopped their cars and tried to make me get into them. I stopped walking after that.

Two weeks after arriving at the school my boss called me in to say that I would be required to not only teach every night at the school but I would also have to travel into the desert to teach German construction workers twice a week. My German students were building a major 5 star resort on the Omani peninsula. The drive to and from the building site took 4 hours on a treacherous road that would not pass road standards in South Africa. So I would drive for two hours, teach for two hours, drive for two hours and then teach for a further four hours at the school until 9 o’clock at night.

The stresses of the life I found myself in led to me being in a perpetual state of fight or flight. There were so many layers of stress to my existence in Oman, some of which I am choosing not to share in this forum, that led me to a point of such extreme burn out and anguish and it was in this place of utter desperation that God met me.

My long drives out into the desert were my moments of being ‘on the way’. Travelling through the same landscapes that Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist and Jesus would have found themselves in brought me an experience of God that I never would have had had I not left everything, and everyone behind me.

I have many pictures of my time in Oman but I have chosen two that I feel best symbolise my experience there. The first is the one you will have seen. If there was ever a symbol of how small I felt in a big, foreign and harsh environment it is this picture. And yet, like this picture there are glimpses of great beauty and majesty too. I will often describe my time in the Middle East as singularly both the most brutal and extraordinarily beautiful times in my life.

The second picture was taken of Stephen and I when he came to visit me. I was in the midst of the greatest despair I have ever felt, and it is quite literally the saddest picture ever taken of me. And yet, I am in a beautiful place, with my soul mate and I am smiling. Boys if there is one thing you take from my message today please let it be this one – just because someone looks ok, or says they are ok, they might not be ok. You never know the journey someone is on and looks can be deceiving. When I look at this picture I feel a shot of anguish, even 15 years after it was taken. Do not take anyone at face value, always listen to God’s promptings to look beyond the smile.

I wrote a blog during my time in Oman. I was forced, by my boss to shut it down because I was exposing too much of what was going on in the country at that time. The other day I discovered it again and I would like to read an extract from it, written by a much younger and far more fragile young woman, but still me:

I never really understood the concept of spiritual battle, of overcoming fear, anxiety and doubt. When Christianity is an accepted way of life rather than a way of being people take for granted the principles that Jesus taught. I am now proud to say that I hunger for His word, believing in Christ extends beyond merely living a Christian lifestyle.

I came here to make peace with my future but I am actually making peace with my past as well. The only expectation we can ever have of God is the faith that He will see us through tomorrow if we listen to Him and follow His promptings. I have spent far too many days trying to work out who, what, where, when and how I will be in my future without simply allowing God to be with me in my present.

All of us have our obedience tested by God, and remember He wants ‘obedience not sacrifice’. Because I’m a fairly literal girl God decided to go old school in His test of my obedience – He sent me to the desert, like He did to Moses and Elijah and Jesus and countless others. I now know how marvellous it must have been for Jesus when Mary  washed His feet after a dusty day. I now know that the desert will test everything one believes in but its emptiness is also the place where God’s voice resonates best.

I feel I am at the beginning of a long journey where I truly seek to discover God’s will in my life. If we do what God wants us to do then it will be impossible to sink into despair – yes, sometimes God asks us to do things that we are sure are beyond our capabilities, stamina and faith, but when we do things with God’s power our potential is limitless.

I often think back on the girl who wrote these lines and I thank her for her courage. If I had not believed that God’s plan for my life would be greater than I could have ever imagined it could be I would not be standing here today.

To conclude I, like Elijah experienced physical and emotional exhaustion in a desert place, I experienced divine provision from the angels and missionaries that God posted along my journey, I battled through not wind, earthquake, or fire but war, terror and prejudice. And at the end of it all, when I had nothing left in me a still small voice whispered to me  ‘Go home and marry Stephen, and you will have a son’. And that is what I did. Sometimes we have to be all alone boys, we have to have everything that is comfortable and familiar taken from us, to remember that we are actually never alone.