The speaker in our church last Sunday said that Prayer is mentioned 500 times in the Bible, but that Wealth is mentioned 2,350 times. That sort of stuck with me like statistics sometimes do. They niggle at me. The Bible has a lot to say about Wealth and what it is for.
I am contemplating hard times. The last few years have been hard on me, because they have been hard on the people that I serve. This week's news is that 25 000 more jobs were lost in the second quarter of this year, in South Africa. Of those, 13 000 were in the "community and social sector". This sector is bleeding and C4L is feeling its pain.
Economies shrink. Droughts come unpredictably. Businesses close. People move on. But imagine a Chamber of Commerce putting up a sign asking the jobless to "keep going". This really gets to me. Too close for comfort.
I keep pressing the case for promoting self-employment as opposed to government interventions to revive sectors that are shrinking. But I am a voice crying in the veld.
Thanks for your prayers. One encouraging note in my day today was being approached by a deep township high school asking if I would be the Motivational Speaker at its Matric Dance. What an honour!
But what am I gonna say to young learners facing their final exams next month? What can inspire them to work hard and do their best? Certainly not the conditions that they will face in December when they leave that school for the last time, and enter the work force.
Oliver Tambo said that "a nation that does not take care of its youth has no future and does not deserve one".
Pray for me as I try to motivate learners when their future is bleak.
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