Our Evangelist does not meet one of the top management people of a shipping line every day. The man finds it difficult to talk. He is speechless.
The cadet was on board for three months, he explains with difficulty. He got up each morning, did his work, went to bed and got up for his shift. He did not talk much. He only did what he had to.
The doors of every ship and vessel seem to be locked today. Wherever Danie arrives the stepladders have been drawn up, or the men are too busy to see him.
At one ship Danie makes it to the deck, but an angry voice heard in crackling tones over a radio sender announces that it is not a good time. Danie knows when he has lost the battle and leaves.
The photo she sent is of herself. I have to check twice to make sure it is really a photo of her. There are no signs of her once lush brown hair, always and characteristically hanging down to just above her shoulders. She is simply bald.
In Hebrews 11:1 we read the well-known sentence about faith: ... being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Actually it is a strange sentence, because 'hope' and being 'certain' are both things we cannot touch or see. It means that sometimes we do not see that our work carries the fruit of faith, but we know that you see it less often than we do. Yet, we are certain of the things we do not see!
The postcard shows a picture of a young mother and her daughter, captured in bronze. They are staring expectantly across the ocean. They keep watch over the quay in Odessa, capital of seamen in the Ukraine.
The bronze statue reminds one of tragedy, a tragedy where women, daughters and parents wait forlornly on the quay, always waiting for a ship that never arrived. They waited for fathers, children and spouses – fathers, children and spouses that never returned...