Copyright © 2026 PJ Stassen

All Rights Reserved

(P.S. This copyright does not override Reddit terms: Reddit remains free to use this content and post at will in terms of its rules).

1. **INTRODUCTION**. 

"Magical moments of mercy!" is the only way I can describe what has happened in my life over the years, despite my glaring imperfections, incredible social indiscretions, remarkable stupidities and the classic clumsinesses of my irresponsible youth. The reader must know that I claim no special psychic or spiritual gifts, no remarkable Biblical talents or any special favour with the Creator that I consciously know of. 

In fact, I am a pretty ordinary Afrikaner born in a nondescript little mining village in South Africa called 'Randgate', a mining, farming and railway community founded by the Randlords of the late 18th and early 19th century, e.g., great magnates and tycoons like Sir Joseph Benjamin Robinson, of whom the immense success of his mining company, *Randfontein Estates,* briefly, along with tycoons like Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Beit and Barney Barnato, made him one of the richest men in the British Empire at the time. Wj hen I was a kid, my father used to work at the *Randfontein Estates* mine as a shaft carpenter.    


Be that as it may, notwithstanding the fact that I was born on, what some would consider, the richest gold reef in the world, and that I today live only an hour's drive from the Cullinan mine where the world's largest gem-quality diamond ever, the Cullinan, was found, I am not wealthy or particularly famous, living in the capital city of my country. During childhood, however, the main road between my village (Randgate) to my grandparents' home in Auckland Park, Johannesburg (South Africa) ran on top of this enormous gold reef, and was aptly named 'Main Reef Road'. Today I am a retired corporate trainer; I mow my own lawn, I service my little 12 square mtrs splashpool once a week,  and still fool around with the piano now and then. I am, to sum it all up, neither a notorious criminal nor a glamorous celebrity ... just ordinary, very ordinary. 

Having said that, I wish to share with interested readers some of the remarkable magical moments of mercy in my life; you decide what you want to do with the information, if anything at all. So here we go:

2. **MAGICAL MOMENTS OF MERCY.**

2.1 **The Coffee Pot Incident.** In 1966, during my mandatory conscription year in the South African Defence Force, we were installed in the shape of a large tent-city just outside of the capital city, Pretoria, comprising about 5 000 tents in preparation for the 1966 Republic celebrations. I was in the Military Police Corps, engaged in the security of the temporary rendezvous point for soldiers from all over South Africa. In the end, the march entailed over 17 000 marching soldiers, plus all the military hardware, air shows etc. The organising of the event had taken such a toll on the military official in charge of the event, Brigadier Burger, that he reportedly died from a heart attack on that same day (I stand to be corrected on this). 

Be that as it may, it so happened that, although we officially served as 'military police', we also were tasked to, around the clock, also do KP in the field kitchen, as the one or two cooks alone were no match for the large contingent of soldiers in the regiment. So, coming from the officers' mess one evening and carrying a huge ensemble of cutlery and crockery, I heard the lid of the coffee pot hitting the ground beneath my feet. I stopped, looked down, only to see the lid smiling sarcastically at me from where it lay on the ground. However, the moment I tried to bend down to pick it up with my right hand, the whole tower of items threatened to crash down to the ground too in sympathy with the lid. So, I resolved to walk to the kitchen first and go and dump all the stuff on the table; then, return to fetch the lid ... no point in being lazy. When I arrived in the tent, I proceeded to carefully lift the items one-by-one and place them on the table. When the turn of the coffee pot arrived, I was shocked to discover that the lid was still intact on the pot., and was nowhere to be seen outside. 

2.2 **The King Protea Incident.** Some years ago, my wife and I were s coming home from church one morning when, at the supermarket and driving out, there was this student selling the most gorgeous of artificial replicas of the national flower of South Africa, i.e., the *King Protea*, carefully, artfully, made from all and diverse kinds of coloured beads. "Wow, thats pretty!" my wife exclaimed. "Yes!", I retorted, in some highbrow tone, "but I prefer the real thing, the genuine article!" 

I once, many years ago, presented an artificial bouquet of flowers (made from plastic) to a girlfriend and will never forget the verbal dressing down I got from later commentators about the incident. The rationale behind my youthful indiscretion was, however, that the plastic flowers would probably have lasted for years, while the genuine article would have withered in two weeks. I never knew that science did not have the ethical gravitas to override protocol. So, there we were, and, with the memory of the beautliful artificial *King Protea* still in mind, my wife went into the house to make final preparations for the couple, a retired gynaecologist and his wife (a registered nurse) whom we were expecting for lunch. I was busy stoking the barbeque fire about two hours later when they arrived, and , from where I stood I could vaguely see the woman carrying some kind of 'hostess gift' intended for my wife. 

We had a magnificent, quiet, pleasant lunch, chatted some more, had some tea or coffee later on, and, finally, the time arrived for the couple to leave. I went into the house, sank down on some couch in the corner, only to look up and notice the gift the nurse had brought for my wife: It was a fresh, new, giant 'King Protea', from some florist's shop: It was the real thing ... the genuine article.      

2.3 **The Evening Star Incident.** Some years ago, in the late afternoon, I was on my bed in our home, reading *C.S. Lewis:* *The Authentic Voice,* a biography on C.S. Lewis, by William Griffin published in 1986. My wife was out in the garden, watering the lawn while the sun was disappearing behind the horizon. Our city is very hot and humid in summer, and people still enjoy irrigating in the evenings, something I have lately learned not to do with the lawn where we live, since the humidity combined with the sveltering heat are inclined to attract a type of fungus that will destroy the lawn in a matter of weeks.   

So, I was just coming to the page where Lewis' wife, Joy, during the early 1960s, was calling Lewis from the verandah of their home in Oxford, England, to go and have a look at the 'evening star'. It apparently was a beautiful, bright, moonlit evening, and Joy was fascinated by how close the 'evening star' and the moon were that night. "Isn't it beautiful?" she remarked (my paraphrasing). "Beautiful!" Lewis apparently also remarked (also my paraphrasing). "However, that is the planet Venus; it is not a star."  

Now, C.S. Lewis died on 22 November 1963 from kidney failure, with the news of his death incidentally obscured by the death of John F. Kennedy, who also died on the same day. So, Joy and Lewis must have had that conversation (as published in a 1986 book) not later than 1963, with my wife calling me from outside, in say about the year 2019/2020, who had no idea what I was reading, to come and have a look at the "beautiful moon". When I went outside, I stood flabbergasted ... there was the moon and the planet Venus barely two centimeters apart, just like the incident in the C.S. Lewis book. How could 'fate' have known what I was reading, and what my wife was going to tell me, would historically (incidents 56-60 years apart) culminate in a perfect match? 

P.S. The photo used to illustrate this article with was taken a few nights ago from Pretoria, South Africa in 2026. 

3. **REFLECTION**. I can regale the reader with possibly many such stories, but it will use up too much space on this site and I do not want to be unkind to my hosts. Mathematicians, scientists and psychologists, however,  will probably explain such incidents away by the wonder of statistics ... history is replete with "impossible" improbabilities happening to all kinds of people everywhere. To me they will alll always, however, remain magical moments of life-enriching mercy and epiphany.           
