Whichever God you pray to, speaks to you in different forms – be it in dreams, in prayer or via a Facebook Marketplace stranger. You just have to be receptive to the message, which in this case was to live in the moment and forget tomorrow’s worries, as Gasant Abarder writes in a new #SliceOfGasant column.
Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column here.
I’ve been spending a lot of time on Facebook Marketplace since killing my Twitter account. And dare I say, it is much more credible.I find it interesting what people sell, and their sales pitches are even more hilarious.
I love a good laugh, and instead of feeling pain caused by winter bugs, it was a good pain caused by laughter. The Jive Cape Town Funny Festival provided the kind of raucous antics that make grown men cry from laughter. The Baxter show was back for its 24th year – a remarkable feat by founder Eddy Cassar in these days of forgettable content.
The thing is, I needed the laughs. It was rib-cage-hurting-funny. I received some really dire news about a month ago and was wallowing in my pity party. The likes of Alan Committie, Emo Adams, Yaaseen Barnes, Dalin Oliver and an American act (where a real-life penis flashed across stage!) reminded me how lekker it was to laugh and forget our worries.
But back to my marketplace comedy. It’s where people sell ‘rugby torks’, ‘thick and big Supasize Men Cream’ (I’ll leave that to the imagination) and a red Ferrari for just R6.5 million. I’ve found some bargains too, like a pair of rare, once-worn Adidas Predator football boots, worth around R6 000 second hand, for just R300.
We’ve been using the platform a lot recently as we prepare to move house. I put a home gym on Marketplace for a really great price and got about 700 responses. But one buyer stood out. I usually don’t give folks my number, but I made an exception for this gentleman.
Now, as a seller, you want to go first come, first served. But this fellow had a compelling story. In his prime, he looked like a bodybuilder when he had a heart attack late last year. While on the path to recovery, the gym employee then suffered what he thought were kidney stones at the start of the year. But it turned out to be cancer.
He needed a home gym like mine so he could train at home once his chemotherapy sessions were completed. It suddenly made my problem, which I didn’t share with my buyer, pale by comparison. I decided to keep the home gym for him until he was able to arrange transport to collect it.
The following day, he sent me a WhatsApp message, the kind I’d usually ignore. But I read with interest. It had Bible verses that addressed my big worry this past month.
Under the headline, ‘Don’t worry about tomorrow’, were two Bible verses that stood out. The first was, ‘So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own (Matthew 6:34).’
The other read: ‘Making reasonable provisions for the future is sensible, but to worry about tomorrow is foolish and unfaithful. God is the God of tomorrow as well as the God of today and eternity. The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness (Lam. 3:22–23).’
Perhaps, as if to show this was no fluke, I was sent a link to a verse of my Prophet Muhammad’s (Peace Be Upon Him) depression when Allah did not communicate with him for six months after revealing the Holy Qu’ran.
The verse Surah Ad-Duha (The Morning Brightness) reads: ‘In the name of Allah, the Entirely Merciful, the Especially Merciful. By the morning brightness. And [by] the night when it covers with darkness, Your Lord has not taken leave of you, [O Muhammad], nor has He detested [you]…’
It made me remember that tomorrow will take care of itself and to be in the moment. That is how I celebrated my 16th wedding anniversary on Friday and that is how I am going to play this thing called life henceforth.
Buy that thing on Facebook you’ve been eyeing today. For tomorrow, it may just be sold.
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