Inner Court

Inner Court by Janice VanCronkhite
www.jvcartworks.com

The Inner Court of Our Promised Land


The Lord said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

So Abram left, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him….
Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh and Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

Genesis 12 is the anchor of hope I’ve based my life upon. Abraham was known as the friend of God. Are we known as friends of God? How was it that Enoch just was no more? Promised Land is about relationship with God and what we find along the seeking journey. God has always been the ever present help I needed throughout my life. When my youngest brother gasped to breathe during asthma attacks as an infant, while holding him in my lap in the backseat of the car while Mother drove to the emergency room I prayed to God, who I knew could help him breathe and keep him alive. I was six years old then and today at the age of 49 faith is still producing evidence of God’s nearness in my life. From praying for my brother to leaving corporate America behind, selling home, cars and furniture and moving into a rented duplex in Atlanta’s inner city to serve the homeless and poor in the city’s 42 government housing projects and on the streets; God has always, always provided for us!

Henri Nouwen wrote, "Here we see what compassion means. It is not a bending toward the under privileged from a privileged position; it is not a reaching out from on high to those who are less fortunate below; it is not a gesture of sympathy or pity for those who fail to make it in the upward pull. On the contrary, compassion means going directly to those people and places where suffering is most acute and building a home there."

Heschel taught: A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair. [New York Journal-American, April 5, 1963]

I’ve encountered trials, hardships, suffering and pain but also great and glorious moments along the journey of life. Often my family and I have witnessed many dramatic miracles which evidenced all the more God’s present reality to me. We would remark to one another that no one would believe some of these stories… reminding me of God’s response to Habbakuk’s cry of: “How long, O Lord?” “Look at the nations and watch and be utterly amazed, for I am going to do something that even if told you wouldn’t believe.” I remain always utterly amazed!

My High School English teacher, Betty Dillard, required all her senior students to keep a journal. We had to write in various poetic form everyday how we felt that day. My father died very suddenly of a heart attack the summer before and I was going through one of the lowest and most lonely times of my life. Writing in that journal brought me back to life, forcing me to face feelings in a healthy way. Hope returned as I wrote of the emptiness in my heart and an even greater relationship with God as father blossomed as well.

Attending North Carolina School of the Arts opened up an incredible creative world to me, inspiring me to move to Boston to further pursue artistic interests. While in Boston God introduced me to the man he’d chosen for me to marry and after 27 years, he still is the most incredible man of my dreams!

After our two children were born and we were living out a pretty comfortable lifestyle God intervened, introducing us to an awesome life of love for others that broke open the wells of God’s love in us fresh and anew. We thought we’d spend the rest of our lives in Atlanta’s inner city but ten years later God intervened again and led us to a new promised land- 8,000 miles away from home – South Africa!

The last seven years we’ve experienced miraculous times of God’s sovereignty. As a child, my siblings and I would remark that no one would ever believe the stuff we’d been through! Drawing from the hope of some of those stories I began writing about them. Encouragement and faith spurred up again and I began to understand how our lives become a testimony to others. Oh, I’m not saying I’m great or anything like that at all. As a matter of fact, I found myself writing down times when God had been so faithful because I needed the encouragement, too!

We set up a booth in the wind and rain at Greenpoint Stadium to sell pens that Ned had crafted from wood and I would wonder… what in the world a nice family like us was doing trying to sell pens to raise funds for ministry? It was hard and humbling and we didn’t sell many of the pens. Tourists were looking for cheap treasures to purchase that would boast of their trip to Africa. We thought our indigenous pens would be just the ticket. Guess African masks and baskets, etc. were more in line. So why did we go through all that? God was teaching us compassion for the folks in Green Market Square that I meet with weekly. I started out just visiting… sounds like just browsing, doesn’t it? I’d stop by Sylvia’s Hair Braiding Booth to encourage Sylvia and Patience. These two wonderful women of God came to South Africa seeking asylum from war torn Congo. Cape Town was also very hard. There was wind and rain and unbearable sun, and often a huge lack of customers. We’d practice speaking French and English to one another and end up praying together. The whole experience grew into meeting and praying for one another every week for the last couple of years. And as the Bible teaches in Acts; ‘the Lord adds to our number.’ We still sit on the public benches out in the open on the outskirts of the market. It’s not open air preaching with a microphone, etc. That just isn’t the way Jesus would do it, in my opinion. We sit, talk, pray, sing and read our Bibles together- in several different languages as family would sit in the lounge of one’s home. We just happen to think we are sitting in God’s living room at his feet instead of a very public market.

I started a prayer journal with pictures and stories of everybody from the market one year and it just kept going after that. Then our family went through some personal grief and challenges. Each morning I would sit with God and talk it over with him. Holy Spirit would come and I wrote down most of what occurred as a result of my visits with God; whether in my chair or in the Kirstenbosch Gardens under a tree.

I lack the training of a professional writer and it’s taken years to get this material into a readable form. So I am praying that you’ll be able to follow my train of thought throughout and our stories will inspire you in your own faith in God who loves us all. I pray it will spur you on in your journey to the promised land God has set before you. And when the race is finished, lets stand on the same side together, hand in hand, in hopes of hearing the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant. Now enter into your rest.” Until we meet in Eternity, Bon Voyage!

Susan Hill
bnfrsa@sentechsa.com
Cape Town, South Africa