Why I choose to stay

Against my better judgment, I recently got embroiled in an online argument with a bunch of disgruntled expats. You know the type. The people who ‘love’ South Africa, but hardly have a good thing to say about it, and feel so ‘blessed’ to have managed to escape our shores and flee the burning house that is currently South Africa. 

While I believe people can and do have legitimate reasons for leaving SA (which I’ll deal with in Part 2), the encounter gave me good reason to consider why I choose to stay.

I love South Africa, but I need to clarify what I mean by that.

I believe that love is primarily about action, not emotion. There is a lot about SA that is easy to enjoy, appreciate and ‘love’, but there are also significant challenges, struggles and realities that are awful. It’s easy to love the good stuff, but what about the rest? Do we simply leave? Turn a blind eye? Blame the government? What does loving a country really look like?

I believe it’s not about feeling some well meaning emotional connection or warm and fuzzy memories about a place. Love is action. Love for a country is evidenced through long term, sacrificial, serving of a country to see that country become all in can be. It’s not oblivious to the weaknesses and struggles, quite the opposite. Love is acutely aware of those things and seeks to do what it can to see change and growth.

Some people accuse us ‘SA optimists’ of having blinkers on that blind us to the reality of what’s going on. I simply see it as choosing to acknowledge that great challenges present great opportunities. I could move to a country where everything works and there is no crime, poverty or AIDS. But in most of those countries the church is slowly dying because everyone is so wonderfully comfortable and happy that they have no apparent need for God, at least that’s what some of them will tell you.

I firmly believe that God wants me to be in SA at the moment. That may change, but as I look to follow, serve, obey and listen to Him, I can be sure that the place where I am now is the exact place where God wants me to be. (Acts 17:26- “From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.”)

I am deeply convinced that God is less interested in my comfort than He is in the establishing of His kingdom in the world. But I still get to choose. I can choose comfort, or I can choose to pursue love for God expressed through serving the country he’s called me to, with all of its horrors and failures.

So I’m choosing to stay until He calls me to serve him somewhere else.