Go Tell It on the Mountain: An October Witness

“The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty” (Psalm 90:10). So prayed Moses, measuring the brevity of days against the eternity of God. Centuries later Solomon observed the same truth from another angle: “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Thousands of years have passed, and still nothing essential has changed. We lengthen our sentences and shorten our memories. We upgrade our tools and outsource our attention. We reframe the past until it fits the ego of the present.

On 10 October 1947, my mother, Jacoba Johanna du Toit (Viljoen), was born. On 26 October 2021, a fortnight after turning seventy-four, she went home to the Lord. Between those two Octobers lies a span that cannot be measured only in years. It should be remembered in classrooms and congregations, in journeys across continents, in thoughts that carried families through uncertainty. To speak of her life is not simply to mark its length, but to bear witness to the Word that gave it shape and strength.

I think of October as her month of beginning and completion. Not a circle closed, but a line made true. God gave her a balance within the bracket Moses names: the realism of seventy, the mercy of eighty, and a life that filled the space between with service. To number days is not to count them like coins. It is to weigh them. To ask what each day is for, and whom it serves.

Psalm 90 is not sentimental. It faces frailty without panic. Life is brief, God is forever, so learn wisdom while it is still called “today.” My mother lived that way. She did not waste today awaiting a perfect tomorrow. She gave what she had, where she was, with joy that refused to be theatrical and faith that refused to be quiet.

Isaiah 40 was her compass. “Comfort, comfort my people,” and “the word of our God stands forever.” In a world that tries to drown truth in noise, that chapter restores proportion. Flesh is grass. Glory is a flower. Breath comes. Breath goes. But the Word stands, and in that Word we find the courage to speak peace. Not the peace of avoidance, but the peace of proclamation: God is here. Make straight a highway. Lift up your voice with strength. Do not be afraid.

That is why we sang “Go Tell it on the Mountain.” It was not a casual choice; it was hers. She asked that, when she went to be with Jesus, this spiritual would be sung. Born in the oral tradition of enslaved African Americans and later carried into hymnals by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, the song began as a cry of freedom and hope rising from the margins. Its refrain was later woven into the Nativity story, but its deeper message was never bound to a season: go and tell what God has done. For her, that meant the whole gospel. Tell of His birth that reordered time. Tell of His death that carried our sins and offered forgiveness once for all. Tell of His resurrection that broke the grave and secured the promise of our own rising, for all who are His. The song was her instruction: over the hills and everywhere, even when the mountain is your own grief or your own silence, keep telling—Jesus Christ is born, crucified, risen, and coming again.

So I keep numbering days. Not to hoard them, but to spend them wisely. When I teach, I count the hour a gift. When I write, I count the page a witness. When I pray, I count the breath a mercy. However many years are given — seventy by realism, eighty by mercy, or more by grace — the measure that matters is faithfulness. And faithfulness is always possible, whatever the season.

On the day we said goodbye, I remembered another: a bus pulling into a rest stop on the road to Berlin. I stood outside, phone in hand, and made a promise. I will write your story. At her bedside, when she was too weak to speak across continents, Mariette held the phone and spoke louder what Mamma whispered. “Mamma says Thank You.” Those words do not end anything. They send us on. As her children, we will continue to carry her message—on the mountains, over the hills, and everywhere.

Teach us to number our days. Teach us to speak peace. Teach us to go tell it on the mountain, and in the valley, and along every road where a bus stops and a promise must be made.

October holds her beginning and her completion. The Word holds the rest.