My wife, daughter (Chyreece had been born in 1996), and I gave away most of our belongings and took our caravan (trailer) down to the Natal South Coast and moved in to a caravan park (trailer park). If we had to live in a caravan park, we reasoned, why not at least be in a pleasant place? The owners graciously understood our story and gave us an amazingly low rate. While it was a joy to be in a less burdened environment, the heaviness of sin and guilt still lay heavily upon me. During the days I began to read the Bible and some good books my father had handed to me before we had left. I began to pray (Acts 9:11). Life began to seep back into my heart and mind, but I was still a lazy sinner. While I was beginning to enjoy the Bible, good books, and prayer, I was still sleeping in until a ridiculous hour in the morning.
The Lord used a very unusual means to bring me to a point of decisive change. While we were living in that caravan park (trailer park), there was a buzz among the people there that the sardine run would be early that year. Every year on the South African South Coast, around July, masses and masses of sardines swim close to the beach and the whole South Coast comes alive. Fishing boats drag in tons of sardines, children wade knee-deep in the water and scoop sardines out in plastic buckets, big-game fishermen pull out the huge fish that follow the schools of sardines-engorging themselves, scuba and snorkel divers swim among the sardines and spear huge fish and try to avoid the sharks that are eating the huge fish. It is a very exciting time for a sleepy coastline.
Having never seen the sardine run before, I was keen to see it and this year would be a perfect opportunity. Day after day the talk escalated and there were a few false alarms when everyone would run down to the beach, but there were still no sardines. As it turned out, the sardines did come one bright morning at about 07:30. Masses of people ran down to the beach as the excitement spread. The whole coastline came alive and everyone was having a wonderful day; except me. I was still sleeping. There was no noise in the nice quiet caravan park because everyone was on the beach, except myself and my wife.
Lifting my lazy head from the pillow, I heard the sound of an excited child shouting to someone in the distance, on the road outside our window. He was shouting about the sardines. Suddenly I was awake. Stumbling from my bed, into some rudimentary clothing, I rushed in my dopy state to the beach. As I walked, I was walking against the flow of traffic; everyone else was walking away from the beach. I felt like such a fool as I stood there alone on the beach watching one or two sardines lying flipping their last flips on the sand. Around me, the tracks of the boat trailers, the millions of busy footprints and a deserted beach. I stood there speechless.
Going back to my sleeping wife in our caravan, I could feel a surge of holy aggression coming on. I couldn't live like this anymore. I hated living a passionless, lazy, purposeless, directionless life. I had had enough! Live was teeming all around me and I was lying sleeping! I wanted more than anything in the world to be a part of the teeming thrill of life rather than being the lazy slob lying sleeping, hour after hour, until my life is used up in purposelessness. I called out to the Lord in desperation, saying that I would not leave that place until I knew my life was right with Him. I wanted God to transform me. It was then that life began. God had so uncovered the ugliness of a life of self-serving sinfulness that I began to hate it passionately.
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