Grace

Ephesians 2:8 (ESV)
"For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is a gift of God"

I remember very clearly walking into university that day. I remember how excited I was but mostly how small I felt.

I got into university with luck.

My marks were good enough and I got a partial cultural bursary but there weren’t funds for the rest.

My mum enrolled me saying “you have one chance.”

One chance to create a better life for myself.

One chance to not be dependent forever.

And one chance to enable myself to see and do things, my parents didn’t have access to.

I received my degree and Honours in 2008.

Standing in the penguin suite, feeling very proud, my mum asked me how I felt.

I replied there is so much more I want to learn.

Watching as the #FeesMustFall protest go wild, barely 2km from my work, tears came to my eyes.

My tertiary education didn’t happen because we could afford it.

It didn’t happen because I was the right skin colour. It happened because of grace.

Faith, on my mother’s behalf is what got me into university.

Grace got me through it.

I wish education was free.

But then again, I also wish people would be less ignorant of the world around them.

More than just an education, the four years at university was the beginning of a love affair with Jozi, it’s people and its ability to, like a hen, take in everyone and make a space for them.

Sometime at the end of last year, I sat in the audience as a man from Somalia spoke in broken English, and told us how he fled his war-torn country. He arrived in South Africa alone, wanting to study. Another spoke about how he was herding cattle in northern Limpopo when he heard that he got a bursary for university. In his excitement, he ran home, forgetting the cattle out in the field.

Grace comes in all shapes and sizes.

Mine came in the form of a mother who believed against all odds.

For the Somalian’ grace came in the form of the UNHCR who gave him a bursary and for the other guy, grace came in the form of Studietrust.