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5
February 2016
A trip to break your heart
t
he incessant heat and messages from our grain producers
during the December holidays compelled me in the first week
of January to get into my car to personally find out what the
current situation was.
How would I be able to advise the Minister if I have not
seen it first hand and have not experienced what is happening in
the production areas personally? It was not easy. One of my out-
standing personal goals of 2015 was: ‘
Take a trip to break your
heart
’. That was precisely what I did: 1 248 km and 258 photos later.
I came to realise that I, in fact, really understood very little of what
it precisely meant when I wrote this down in my quiet time journal
in January last year.
I tried to do this as unobtrusively as possible, almost like the biblical
Nehemiah, who inspected the walls of Jerusalem in the evenings.
By the middle of the second day the media tracked me down with
everyone wanting to know what I had seen. In Sannieshof under a
tree with the temperature in the shade registering 37°C, I endeav-
oured to give voice to my thoughts and emotions.
How can one convert all your emotions into words so that others
can fully understand them? Who am I to try to describe the emotions
of producers about their farms and their people and the animals
who do not understand what happened to the grass and the water?
Next to the road my ‘driver’ (youngest son) gave a small bottle of
cold water to a man who has walked more than 20 km in the bloody
sun to get to town while I tried to get the best photo of maize wilting
in the heat waves.
In every town we passed I noticed how the number of green Jojo
water tanks have increased. Those who still doubt that a water short-
age is our next crisis, only need to go and look for themselves. We
can replace and generate electricity ourselves, but water?
I hear of the new record temperatures in the Swartland and the
West Coast and during the day we keep the curtains of the house
drawn so that the house can remain ‘cool’ – just like my grandmother
Dollie did on the farm Brandkop during December holidays.
What to do now? What is the message of the scorching heat and
drought? Who must hear it and who must do what about it? These
are the thoughts milling through my head over and over.
Every producer and every agricultural business will be under great
pressure this year. Standing together and surviving together – that is
what we will have to do.
What does this imlpy for Grain SA? We will have to make sure that
we have all the required information and that we are aware of the
precise needs of our members so that we may be in a position to
speak on their behalf when we have to discuss what is needed to
survive in 2016. We would like to still be around when the people in
future talk about the drought of 2016. Then we will tell them how we
survived it and what we did to survive so that we can inspire others
with courage.
I do not have any clever bit of advice to share with you, except my
faith in God. He gives the prosperous years and also the bad years.
Let us keep faith in Him and His promises. He has already borne the
punishment for us and He is not punishing us, but He is trying to tell
us something. Let us all together endeavour to find out what it is
He wants to tell each of us and then act in obedience.
DS KOOS KIRSTEN
WOORD
Uit die
“d
aarom gee ons nie moed op nie,” só sê die apostel
Paulus in 2 Kor 4:16. Hy ly liggaamlik en is besig om
te vergaan en tog kan hy uitroep dat hy nie moed
opgee nie. Hy kan dit doen omdat hy ‘n belangrike
Bybelse beginsel geleer het.
Alles hier op aarde is tydelik en verganklik en ons moet daarby verby
kyk en ons oë op die ewige rig. Hier op aarde kan oeste vergaan en
diere kan sterf. Ja, ook die mens lewe nie vir altyd hier nie. Daar is
egter baie meer as net dit wat ons hier sien en beleef. Die swaarkry
van hierdie wêreld is van korte duur – ‘n oomblik. Die heerlikheid van
die ewigheid oortref dit ver.
Ook ons sal nie moed opgee as ons nie op die sigbare let nie, maar
op die onsigbare. Die sigbare is tydelik, die onsigbare is ewig. Ons
moet nie bly vashou aan en leef uit dit wat ons kan sien nie. Ons moet
uit die geloof leef. Die Here het die Heilige Gees aan ons as pand
gegee om ons daarmee te verseker dat daar meer in hierdie lewe is
as net die sigbare, die tydelike.
Die Heilige Gees gee ook geloof aan ons waarmee ons kan vashou
aan dit wat vas en ewig is. Christus het immers nie na die wêreld
gekom om aan ons aardse voorspoed en geluk te gee nie, maar die
ewige lewe.
Laastens moet ons ons ook daarop toelê om ons lewens só in te rig
dat dit vir God aanvaarbaar, goed en aangenaam is. Ons gedagtes
moet op die regte dinge gerig wees, want dit bepaal hoe ons ons
lewens sal inrig.
Leef dan uit die geloof en rig jou gedagtes op dit wat onsigbaar
en ewig is, dan sal jy selfs in die slegste omstandighede kan moed
hou.
Baie geluk aan
Saney Toring van
Porterville wat vir die
November-uitgawe van
SA Graan/Grain
die gratis
Bybel gewen het.