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<\/a><\/p>\nI\u2019ve watched Trevor Noah a fair bit on TV and on You Tube. He is indeed a funny guy, but while his life story has some hilarious moments in it, it was far more often tragic\u2013 full of racism, poverty, brutality, and the saving grace was a mother who was a very devout, church every Sunday Christian.\u00a0 More on that in a bit.\u00a0 Trevor was born to a white Swiss father, and a black South African mother, and was born during apartheid, a time when race mixing, and having children as a mixed race couple was an absolute crime.\u00a0 Trevor was born in February 1984, and it would be a long time before apartheid would fall apart and Mandela would finally be freed from prison and a new era would begin.\u00a0 The tales Trevor tells of growing up in racist South Africa are horrific, with the Afrikaner rulers not only separating blacks from whites in terms of laws, but mixed race persons from blacks and white, and they were also segregated into separate communities, with Soweto being the most famous and largest of the black communities.\u00a0 Even then, there were so many black tribes with different languages that the blacks were separated from other blacks by tribes and language.\u00a0 There were at least 15 different languages spoken in South Africa, with only common one being English because before the Dutch took over South Africa, it had been ruled by the British. It is a tale of colonialism at its worst.\u00a0 Nor does Trevor sugar coat the fact that even when apartheid was officially done and dusted, there was still plenty of racism going on.\u00a0 Watch the Matt Damon Invictus and you\u2019ll get a sense of things.\u00a0 In some respects, South Africa was and is the most Christian country in all of Africa, with many different black groups as well as whites being Christian.\u00a0 I have lectured in various of the formerly Afrikaans universities and spent time with black Christians in their own meetings, and while the situation is in some ways improving, it is still a very divided country\u2014 much more so than say America.<\/p>\n
The problem for Trevor with being \u2018colored\u2019 or of mixed race, is as a minority group with whom could he identify with\u2014 blacks or whites?\u00a0 He largely chose blacks, but had something of a white education thanks to his mother\u2019s sacrifices.\u00a0 Raised in poverty, Trevor survived by his wits, which included selling CDs and DVDs that were bootlegs, having ripped off the originals and sold his copies much more cheaply.\u00a0 It was like my experience of going to the Moscow flea market where I found all sorts of rock CDs I\u2019d never seen before\u2013 including some compilations of an artist\u2019s whole catalog in one box set\u2014 like the Doors, the Beatles etc.\u00a0 It was amazing.\u00a0 Trevor was raised in church, learned how to pray, seems to have believed in Jesus, but his whole social ethos led him to doubt that there really was a God who would allow so much bad stuff to happen to him and his mother.\u00a0 She was divorced several times, and had finally married a man named Abel who turned out to be not merely a mean drunk, but a violent one who finally in a drunken rage shot his wife including two shots to the head.\u00a0 \u00a0And miraculously she survived.\u00a0 \u00a0The doctor came out of surgery after her son Andrew raced her to the hospital and said the following to Trevor:<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like to use this word\u2026because I\u2019m a man of science and I don\u2019t believe in it. But what happened to your mother today was a miracle. I never say that, because I hate it when people say it, but I don\u2019t have any other way to explain this.\u201d\u00a0 Trevor then picks up the story: \u201cThe bullet that hit my mother in the butt went through and through. It came out and do any really damage. The other bullet went through the back of her head, entered below the skull at the top of her neck. It missed the spinal cord by a hair, missed the medulla oblongata, and traveled through heard just underneath the brain, missing every major vein, artery, and nerve. With the trajectory the bullet was on, it was headed straight for her left eye socket\u00a0 and would have blown out her eye, but at the last second it slowed down, hit her cheekbone instead, shattered her cheekbone, ricocheted off\u00a0 and came out through her left nostril\u2026..The bullet off only a tiny flap of skin on the side of her nostril, and it came out clean, with no bullet fragments left inside. She didn\u2019t even need surgery. They stopped the bleeding, stitched her up in back, stitched her up in front, and let her heal.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0And heal she did.\u00a0 \u00a0The doctor finally said \u201cThere\u2019s nothing we can do, because there\u2019s nothing we need to do.\u201d\u00a0 (p. 280).\u00a0 Trevor adds \u201cmy mother was out of the hospital in four days. She was back at work in seven.<\/p>\n
This was a shattering experience for Trevor because his mother was truly his only living loving relative at the time, and his world was crumbling because she almost died, indeed probably should have died considering being shot in the head point blank by her former husband.\u00a0 \u00a0When she awoke in the hospital and saw her son crying his eyes out, she told him don\u2019t cry. \u201cI wasn\u2019t going to die\u2026.My child, you must look on the bright side.\u201d\u00a0 He retorted \u201cMom you were shot in the face. There is no bright side.\u201d\u00a0 She replied, \u201cof course there is. Now you are the best looking person in the family\u201d [n.b. she had been a very beautiful woman before being shot].\u00a0 \u00a0Trevor told her \u2018you are lucky to be alive\u2026.I still can\u2019t believe you didn\u2019t have any health insurance\u201d [she had canceled it some time in the past].\u00a0 \u00a0She retorted \u201cOh but I do have insurance\u2026Jesus\u201d.\u00a0 Trevor asked \u201cJesus is your health insurance?\u201d She then quoted \u201cIf God is with me, who can be against me.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0Trevor conceded that her prayers to survive when she faced the gun were answered, but then he asked \u201cBut where was your Jesus to pay your hospital bill hmm\u201d I know for a fact that he didn\u2019t pay that\u201d. [because Trevor had paid it].\u00a0 She smiled and said \u201cYou\u2019re right. He didn\u2019t. But he blessed me with a son who did.\u201d\u00a0 (pp. 281-83, excerpts).<\/p>\n
Amen to all that.\u00a0 This book which is only a partial autobiography up to the time of Trevor\u2019s mom being shot and is 288 pages is a great,and soul stirring read.\u00a0 And yes, miracles do still happen. I have a friend\u00a0 whose daughter had a similar escape from death after being hit by a car and her mom was told she was going to be brain dead.\u00a0 Until\u2026. she woke up, was healed, and then they both went with me on a trip to the lands of the Bible.<\/p>\n
Life is a mystery. We don\u2019t know why sometimes miracles happen for some folks, and not for others, even if the latter are devout Christians.\u00a0 \u00a0It reminds me of a famous saying attributed to many people including Ansel Adams and more recently John Piper. It reads:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe look at life from the back side of the tapestry. And most of the time, what we see is loose threads, tangled knots and the like. But occasionally, God\u2019s light shines through the tapestry, and we get a glimpse of the larger design with God weaving together the darks and lights of existence.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019ve watched Trevor Noah a fair bit on TV and on You Tube. He is indeed a funny guy, but while his life story has some hilarious moments in it, it was far more often tragic\u2013 full of racism, poverty, brutality, and the saving grace was a mother who was a very devout, church every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":62310,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[14205],"class_list":["post-62307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-life-is-a-miracle"],"yoast_head":"\n
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