About a Jug of Milk…

If you want to be properly entertained, attend a Bulletjie Rugby day. You are able to play Bulletjie Rugby if you are six, seven or eight years old and, in most cases, if your parents believe that you are the best rugby player the world has ever seen!

There were paramedics on duty, but I reckon they were there mainly to assist the mothers that suffered from panic attacks from all the cheering! The way the parents shouted orders from the side, made me wonder if their children’s lives were in danger.

If there is one thing that those boys have that I wish I still had, it would be the ability to get over an injury so quickly. The one moment, the little rascal will be on the floor crying his eyes out. Before you know it, he’s fighting for the ball again, as if his life depended on it. 

Our faith family was selling coffee and other refreshments during the day. By the end of the day, there was a jug with leftover milk. I was the ‘lucky’ recipient of the milk.

The moment I took the jug, I was thinking of ways to get rid of the milk without someone noticing. I didn’t want to put the jug in my car, because it would probably spill. In hindsight, I have to confess that I wasn’t very grateful for the milk; at all.

Danél (my wife) took the milk and left in her own car. On her way home, she drove past a lady she met about a year ago. She is the sister of four brothers and sisters. Their mother passed away of AIDS, and it was her responsibility to make sure that her siblings who were still attending primary school, were looked after. Since Danél had last spoken to her, not much had changed. They were struggling.

Danél didn’t have anything to give the woman, apart from the jug of milk. She poured it into smaller bottles and, feeling pretty silly that it was all that she could give, handed it to the mother. The mother fell down on her knees. Danél was thanked with gratitude that cannot be explained in words. After giving her a little money for transport, she returned home and told me what happened with the milk.

So much gratitude for a simple jug of milk. When I was given the jug of milk, my response was irritation. When someone else received the same milk, the response was the total opposite.

When I got my glasses about five years ago, I couldn’t believe what I had missed all along. For the first time I could see street names and recognize people from far away. I started seeing the detail in trees and clouds. I started seeing different lines in people’s faces that I had never seen before.

Before I got my glasses, I wasn’t even aware of the fact that my eyes weren’t that good. I thought that’s just the way things were.

I believe that God wants to reveal things to us that we don’t even know can be seen; because things are very rarely as they seem at first glance. When we allow the Holy Spirit to take control of the way we see things, we start seeing detail that we’ve never been able to see before.

I experienced this with a jug of milk.