Trailer Meal
After I completed my university degrees in 2003, I was called to a congregation in Johannesburg, South Africa. It had an orphanage of sorts on its premises where eight children lived with a couple in their late fifties that took care of them. The children were all from very broken backgrounds and had a myriad of physcologial scars. One of the girls told me one evening how her dad killed her mother with an ax. She witnessed it. Another girl had a really unhealthy sexual obsession, no doubt due to sexual abuse.
I was still unmarried when I started at the congregation and as youth pastor naturally became involved quite closely with this orphanage and its occupants. My board agreed that I may join them every evening for dinner. The couple that took care off these children suffered their share of hardships and dissapointments. They had their shortcomings but they were good hearted people that cared and enjoyed the children living with them like their own.
Every evening we would dish up and share stories. Sharing a meal is one of life’s great equalizers and at dinner time we were all just people sharing a meal and conversation. I remember laughing a lot. The girls would comment on the outfits I wore on Sundays when I preached. They were a rare source of brutal feedback as far as my looks went, the kind of role my wife would later take over. The boys all longed for a father figure and they always drew hunting and adventure stories from my teenage years out of me. Their was a parrot in the corner that would repeat our phrases at the most unappropriate of times and laughed with us.
At the time I was morbidly ambitious. I knew that I won’t be sharing a meal with them forever. I knew I would marry, pursue goals and move on. MAybe that is what made me enjoy it all the more.
Today I realize that everything I needed was right there at that table. Sustenance, fellowship, laughter and community. I miss having a seat at that table dearly. The children that were with me are all grown up now. If have heard about a few of them. For the most part they are doing well.
I wonder if they also sometimes think back about the meals we shared at that table. I wonder if they wish for a reunion feast as much as I do.
Sometimes moving on is the only way to open your eyes to the fact that you had all you needed. Sometimes hindsight makes you recognize moments of grace that you realize were trailers of heaven.
Gabriel J Snyman
April 17th 2020