That Wonderful Peace, published in The Swimmer

That Wonderful Peace written and read by Jeanette Grant-Thomson.

Music composed and produced by Jason Shaw https://audionautix.com/ Feature picture above: Jeanette’s sister, Wendy, and Wendy’s husband, with their baby.

Backstory to That Wonderful Peace 

This incident stands out in my memory because of the amazing quality of the peace that enveloped me. I was, at that stage, a fairly timid person. Not ‘strong and calm’ at all, except when God was doing something special, so it was a huge blessing. I’d love to be like that all the time.

The whole thing was such a coincidence or God-incidence – I’d been teaching and doing missionary work all year on New Ireland (where I met Peter of My Friend Peter SOL 2018). Nearby in a local village were two missionaries – my sister Arlene (Wendy is her second name) and Michael (John was his second name). We spent a lot of time with them, talking and praying for one another in this interesting native culture.  At the end of a busy but wonderful year, I flew over to Rabaul to have a holiday with Robyn, a Christian who worked there. I waved goodbye to my healthy sister, who had just had a baby. So you can imagine my shock when the events of the story happened.

Another interesting thing is – Rabaul is on New Britain, another large island in PNG. In those days it was established inside the rim of a huge volcano thought to be extinct, and was incredibly beautiful. To my alarm, it was often shaken by small earthquakes which rattled all the bits and pieces in the house.  In 1994 the volcano erupted and send a cloud of ash thousands of metres into the air, smothering the town of Rabaul, burying much of it. Many people were killed. So the Rabaul of my story no longer exists.

The rest is in my story, I think.

Jeanette Grant-Thomson

 

If you loved this story, get a copy of The Swimmer, and tune in to 1079 Life where selected stories from the anthology will be played on-air over summer.