A Jarring Juxtaposition

Every Tuesday morning I meet with a group of moms to pray for our kids' school for one hour. We pray for the teachers, students, and a host of other school-related issues. What's amazing about these ladies is that every one of us speaks a different language at home: Zulu, Venda, Nyanja (from Zambia), Afrikaans, Portuguese and English. We come from different backgrounds and yet for that one hour, we are sisters.

There is so much in South Africa that would tear us apart. Every day the newspapers blare headlines that point out our differences and cause us to become angry, outraged, and disgusted with one another. But every week we moms pray for unity. We hold hands and pour our hearts out to the Lord. We cry together. We hug each other. We carry each others' burdens.

Today as I arrived at school a man was walking his daughter to the high school down the street. He was wearing the AWB khaki uniform (the AWB is an extreme and racially-polarising political group) and carrying a sjambok (a long whip). My children's school is 70% black, so he had more than a few people feeling nervous.

Inside our group of ladies felt that we needed to stand our ground in prayer and sing a song over the school. We walked out to the school field, held hands in a symbol of unity and began to sing, "We are standing on holy ground, and I know that there are angels all around. Let us praise Jesus now, for we are standing in His presence on holy ground."

Those ladies are willing to lay aside their cultural differences to pray for unity. They are willing to speak a second language so that we can all understand one another. They are willing to work together to make the school - and this nation - great. And they are heroes.