Брайс Кортни - The Power of One

Because reading the Bible on Sunday didn’t count for my heavenly brick account, I was expected to find other kinds of good deed stuff. Each Sunday evening my mother would question me closely about this. Sometimes I really had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for things to claim, like praying for Hitler. Which I hadn’t done of course, but it sounded good and was unusual enough to throw my mother off the scent.

In fact praying for Hitler created a real crisis at that evening’s debate. Marie, who was always there for supper on Sundays, said praying for Hitler wasn’t valid coming from me, as it was a case of one sinner praying for another. My mother then debated with her as to whether a sinner praying for a sinner was an okay idea. My granpa said he thought it was time he was excused from the table so that he could go to his room and pray for fewer debates of this sort. My mother then said, as it was Sunday, she was not going to tell him how rude and hurtful his remark had been.

So getting to the prison for two hours every Sunday to take dictation wasn’t simply a question of Mrs Boxall asking my mother. A great deal of toing and froing to the Lord would have to take place and my fear was that the Lord was going to be hard put to see that taking dictation from a bunch of criminals was the very best possible use of my indentured Sabbath.

My fears proved to be correct and the scheme had to be delayed a month while my mother and the Lord came to grips with the small print. A major investigation such as this one would begin by looking for a precedent in the Bible. In this regard I scored a direct hit when I pointed out that St Paul, in his Epistles, had written from prison in Rome. This was just the sort of material my mother liked to take with her when she had a chat with the Lord and so I expected an early reply from Him. My granpa said later that my St Paul research was a stroke of genius. But, it turned out, the Lord wasn’t all that satisfied because Paul was a born-again Christian, personally converted on the road to Damascus, and he was in prison under an unjust Roman regime. The prisoners in Barberton prison were criminals being punished by a just regime. The point here was that Paul was doing the Lord’s work while I was potentially aiding the devil writing letters from hardened criminals, bound to be up to no good, spreading a network of subterfuge and intrigue throughout South Africa.

To my wife, Umbela,

I send you greetings in my shame. Who is putting food in the mouth of our children? It is hard in this place, but one day I will come to you again. The work is hard but I am strong, I will live to see you again.

Your husband

Mfulu

I wasn’t able to tell my mother how innocent the letters really were because she didn’t know about the previous letters or the tobacco, sugar and salt. So for the next week I read the New Testament like mad. There had to be something in there to help me. Pastor Mulvery was always taking bits and pieces of disconnected scripture and putting them together to mean just about anything; surely I could do the same.

I took the problem to Doc but for once he wasn’t much help. He pointed out according to the great German Lutheran scholars the prison writings of St Paul probably took place about AD 63. Which was nice to know, but no help whatsoever.

Doc’s mind was far too logical for this kind of thing so I took the problem to my granpa who, after my telling opening move with St Paul, seemed anxious to see that the debate was conducted fairly. We sat on the steps of one of the rose terraces, my granpa tapping and tamping and lighting and staring squinty-eyed through the blue tobacco smoke over the rusty roof into the pale blue beyond. After a long time he said, ‘All I know about the Bible is that wherever it goes there’s trouble. The only time I ever heard of it being useful was when a stretcher bearer I was with at the battle of Dundee told me that he’d once gotten hit by a Mauser bullet in the heart, only he was carrying a Bible in his tunic pocket and the Bible saved his life. He told me that ever since he’d always carried a Bible into battle with him and he felt perfectly safe because God was in his breast pocket. We were out looking for a sergeant of the Worcesters and three troopers who were wounded while out on a reconnaissance and were said to be holed up in a dry donga . In truth I think my partner felt perfectly safe because the Boer Mausers were estimated by the British artillery to be accurate to 800 yards and we were at least 1,200 yards from enemy lines. Alas, nobody bothered to tell the Boers about the shortcomings of their brand new German rifle and a Mauser bullet hit him straight between the eyes.’ He puffed at his pipe. ‘Which goes to prove, you can always depend on British army information not to be accurate, the Boers to be deadly accurate, the Bible to be good for matters of the heart but hopeless for those of the head and, finally, that God is in nobody’s pocket.’ He seemed very pleased with this neat summary which nevertheless wasn’t a scrap of help to me.

However, on Sunday night three weeks after Mrs Boxall had first approached my mother, my granpa elected to play a part in the supper debate. My mother opened by saying the Lord was ‘sorely troubled’ over the whole issue which had ‘weighed heavily upon her’. She liked to use words like ‘sorely troubled’ and ‘weighed heavily’ in her debates and I knew they impressed the pants off Marie.

Marie’s cousin had lost her husband in a shooting accident leaving her with a small child. My mother had comforted Marie by saying that she would ask the Lord to ‘bind up the wounds of her heart and pour in the balm of His comfort. That He would be Husband to the widow and Father to the orphan.’ Marie sniffed a bit and said they were the most beautiful words she had ever heard.

My granpa cleared his throat. ‘Were there not a couple of chaps who were crucified on either side of Christ, thorough scallywags as I recall?’

‘The Word refers to them as thieves who were crucified beside the Lord, though I don’t see that they have anything whatsoever to do with the matter,’ my mother replied, her irritation thinly disguised. ‘I do not recall it saying in the Bible that they wrote home from jail.’ I knew that my granpa’s opinions on biblical matters, coming as they did from a sinner who had steadfastly refused to accept Christ into his life, were not very highly regarded.

‘I seem to remember that Christ forgave one of them, promising him a berth in heaven right there on the spot. Or am I mistaken?’

‘Goodness! The Lord does not promise people “berths” in heaven,’ my mother said sharply. ‘“Verily I say unto you, today shalt thou be with me in paradise”, is what the Lord said.’

‘It seems to me, from that remark, that Christ has no objections to convicted felons entering the kingdom of God,’ he declared.

‘Of course he doesn’t! That’s the whole point. Jesus was sent to save the most miserable sinners amongst us. His compassion is for all of us, His love everlasting and His understanding infinite. Seek His forgiveness and you’re saved. You’re no longer a murderer or a thief, you’re one of the Lord’s precious redeemed. The thief on the cross beside Him was saved when he confessed his sins, he was washed by the blood of the Lamb.’

‘Hallelujah, praise his precious name,’ Marie offered absently.

‘And the prisoners here in Barberton. Like him, could they also be saved?’

‘You know as well as I do they could,’ my mother said primly.

‘How?’

‘By accepting Christ into their lives, by renouncing the devil and…’ my mother stopped and looked straight at my granpa. ‘You know very well how.’