1
Peter 2:5 (King James Version)
5Ye also, as lively
stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up
spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
Growing up in the South Africa of apartheid I attended a white school. The
law insisted that I do so. I attended the Helderberg College Church. Our family
always sat on the front row. This was ostensibly because my grandfather was
hard of hearing, which he was. But we continued the practice even after he had
died.
White students and white families
filled the church. Because there was no church nearby that the blacks could
attend, they were allowed to come to our church. But they had to sit in the
very back row of the balcony. Up there they would not be noticed by guests
coming to our church.
When I was twelve, my grandfather
died. Our family moved from South Africa to Solusi, a black school in Southern
Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Here all of the white missionaries sat in the front
few rows of church. This was to set an example to the “poor benighted” blacks
who filled the rest of the church. We wore suits and ties. Our shoes were
polished. Our hair was neatly combed.
I knew that many of the
missionaries really sat in the front so that they would not be contaminated by
coming into contact with the blacks. They seemed afraid to be too closely
associated with people who came to church barefoot because they owned no shoes.
Afraid that their “Sabbath” dresses and suits might brush against the only
dress or shirt a person owned, and in which they had walked maybe a mile or
more so that they could go to church.
I was, of course, not immune to
picking up on some of this superior attitude. As a child growing up in the home
of a college teacher at Helderberg, I felt superior to the poor kids who were
simply students living in a dormitory. We all felt superior to the blacks sitting
in the back row of the balcony to whom no one deigned to speak. They were a
real embarrassment to the church.
Once in a while I would express
something that hinted at my feeling of superiority. My mother would call me
aside, look me square in the eye, and say in tones of rebuke: “You didn’t make
yourself white!” Often this would be followed by a pointed lecture about my
real place in society. We were simply each one a stone that God was building
into a His spiritual house.
In Rhodesia we didn’t have the
strict apartheid laws. On a regular
basis Mom would invite the older (black) people into our home for a feast. She
made no bones about the fact that these women were her friends. Other
missionary families, trying to preserve their thin veneer of superiority,
frowned on this practice. Nor would any show their faces near our home during
one of Mom’s feasts. The local people loved her. They regarded her as their
friend, too.
After working in Africa for 40
years, my parents’ time came to return to America for rest and retirement. But
Mom’s heart couldn’t take the impending separation from her friends. Six weeks
before they were scheduled to leave, she had a heart attack. Now she is buried
amongst her friends in Africa; one stone amongst the many in the spiritual
house God is still building.
Help me remember, Lord, that in Your sight I could count as nothing,
but You have given me the honor of being a stone in the spiritual house You are
building.
[1]
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