With Him Above

Dear God,

My fingers have gone numb from the anticipation of writing this text which my mind has informally prepared for you to hear today.  The point of my plastic sword has been made limber and here I sit, all of a sudden the stupor of having gone blank has gripped my wits.

I have had the entire day to conversation but now that it matters most, I still cannot find the words to speak right now.   The words I need to say so that the angel that comes to me each and every night to my bedside may have a message to take with on his departure at dawn.  These are the same words that taunt me when I walk alone as the unforgiving sound of my own voice inside my own head.  This deafening soliloquy should be part and parcel of the conversations I want to have with you at every moment.  I took a look at my body this morning and when my eyes reached my lower limbs, at my knees to be exact, I realized that they could pass for a baby’s bottom and that is the kind thought about looking at them.  The reality that hit me was that my knees had not been stained by the ashing of kneeling on the floor, not for any kind of labour but the humbleness that all Christians should have.  I thought back to a conversation I had with one good man, Paul Mahlangu while I worked underground, in a coal mine, for Anglo American.  I cannot remember specifically the details of the conversation or how it had escalated to it, but I remember him saying: “the answer to all the questions you ask yourself each day are as far as kneeling for a minute in your day.”

I prayed and prayed each day with a growing persistence to see results, to prove that this formula that I had been given would work and with that, the end of emotional and spiritual impoverishment would come.  Surely the time spent in this newly found ritual, would come a few answers and have my sanity deeply rooted in faith.  I have had tones upon tones of positive moments and like ying and yang, I have had negative moments as well.  You have saved me from death and permanent injury in all the car accidents I have had and many more that were on my path, but I could not see.  This is not because I am a super soldier for the kingdom or a child that does not know his way, but I was saved because, somehow, I’ve always known, there goes an angel, that is the vanguard of my journey, at every expedition I take.  Every day and everywhere.  Have I lost something in the time that I have not spent in your presence?  If I have, is there a way that I can “reboot” my system of blessings that I may too feel the joy that is naturally intended for all those that belong to you?

The older I grow I ask myself; “could I have not known all that I know now when I was a wee bit younger than I am now” and as I grow wiser I realize that all that I know now was intended and written in your palm that I should know now.  Grace is given to all man, even those that cannot define it and Mercy… she’s the mother to all our comfort.

Your Son

Charles Dunn, Amen