Land and Promise

As reported in another blog post we have received our work permits. One of the first things, therefore, after returning to South Africa will be to send our passports to the agency that has helped us. They will then take the passports to the Department of Home Affairs so that the visa will be issued in the very same passports. This is good to have when we travel out of the country and come back.

Yesterday morning it would have been good to have them issued in the passports. Clever us had booked single tickets from Sweden to South Africa. On Arlanda, the airport outside Stockholm, this was questioned: 

How do you expect to enter South Africa, without work permit on a single ticket?

Oops! We explained to the person who checked in our luggage, that we do have permits but they have not yet been issued in our passports. Somehow the person and her superior bought this story. We got our boarding cards.

Today one of the bible readings in church was taken from Hebrews 11. The author writes about Abraham:

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; (Hebrews 11:8-9 – New International Version)

Of course there are many differences. God's promise to Abram, who became Abraham, was about getting heirs. But we interpreted the text into our situation and felt that it had to do with a promise to be able to enter another country. What we did, after boarding in Stockholm and asking ourselves if we were going to be allowed to enter South Africa, was to practice the art of trust. We said to ourselves:

Let us put this into the hands of God.

When we arrived to O R Tambo in Johannesburg, we went to the passport control and when the person asked us what brought us to South Africa, we answered:

We come from Church of Sweden to visit our partner church.

Before he commented, I said the same thing in seTswana:

Rona re go twsa Sweden, re tla etela Kereke ya Luthere ko Africa Borwa.

Maybe my seTswana is a bit weak, but it was good enough for the officer and he smiled and said:

Welcome back to our country!

Our country! Yes, it can be interpreted as his country and also ours. At least this is how we feel and also felt, when the reader in church this morning read about Abraham and how he trusted God.