The fool says in heart . . .Cont'd

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Now imagine you decide you want a child. You give birth to this bundle of joy, and the child becomes everything to you. Assume it’s a girl. You love her so much you don’t think it’s possible to love more than this. Everything you do is done with the child in perspective. She grows, you take care of her through illnesses, toothing aches, saw her first smile, her first crawl, her first step. You take pictures of everything; catch every first, every funny, memorable event on your camcorder. You cry on her first day of school, put her through school, trained her as best as you knew how.

She grows up some more, now she’s fifteen. She knows nothing of life, but she believes she knows all things. She is confused about some things, curious about others, but she’d rather seek information from other novices her age. You watch her grow apart from you, and you try to draw her closer, but the more you try the further away from you she goes. It’s not that she hates you – she just doesn’t think you understand her or all she’s going through, like her friends do. She hates that you’re trying to control her life – she thinks that’s what you want.

She’s fascinated with this group of girls, and wants to be like them. So, before long, she’s hooking up with wild girls, going to all the wrong parties, learning to smoke, trying out joints, she’s been drugged and raped at one such party, or she’s slept with some guy because she didn’t want to look bad, wants to be a big girl, wants to impress her friends who’ve been doing it, wants to impress the guy, everyone else is doing it, etc.Before long, she’s sleeping with a lot of guys, after all she’s already done it, so what’s the point - she tells herself. Naturally she gets pregnant along the line, and aborts the baby without your knowledge, dies a little inside but can’t talk to anyone because it’s not supposed to be wrong, right? It’s legal, for crying out loud; if it wasn’t the school wouldn’t have taken her for the abortion, would they? They didn’t even call you to tell you, because it’s legal, besides, every girl’s doing it. Before long, she’s done it several times, and before long, she’s drinking, or doing drugs, sleeping around, doing anything to drown the pain, but getting sucked in deeper.

She’s twenty now, hates herself because she’s messed up, hates her life, hates you for being right, even though she won’t admit it. You know you’ve lost your daughter, but your heart aches for her. She’s left home, but you yearn for her, cry for her, pray for her, long for her to come home. You never stopped loving her – you even love her more now than you did in the beginning, but she’s lost, won’t call home, and won’t even acknowledge you’re there. She doesn’t talk about you, pretends you don’t exist, and even tells people you’re dead, in a home, lost – you don’t exist.

How would you feel? Of course you still love her. You still want her to come home; you’re waiting with open arms. You don’t care what she’s done; she’s still your daughter.

That’s like the tip of the ice berg, relating this to how God feels. He loves us so much, so so much that if it required Him coming as our kind to save us (which would be a very humiliating experience for Him, great as He is, to become so small as to fit into the womb of a teenage middle-eastern girl and be born as a baby like man, depending on a girl for food, a change of diapers, etc), He was more than willing to do it. It’s incredible ‘cos He’s so big He holds the whole world in His hands, created all things by the word of His power, and put some of Himself into man, yet gave man a free hand in choosing the direction of his life, providing guidance, which of course we disregard ‘cos we think we know better, ‘cos we think Christianity is archaic, old fashioned, forgetting that time is a physical property limited to us on Earth, and God is not held or limited by time or space.

Makes me think of something like an amoeba, shouting up at me, saying I don’t exist simply because I am beyond its ability to comprehend.

God loves everyone of you reading this post, and His loving you is completely without regard for how much you may hate Him. God loves you, whether or not you believe it, whether or not you deny His existence, regardless of anything you've done, whether or not you feel remorse for your wrongs, whether they were mistakes or deliberate. And all He wants from You is that you accept His love - it's endless, and timeless, and undemanding, cutting across all race, tribe, gender and age.

Don't let your decisions about God be determined by the wrongs going on around you, or by the tendency of Christians to be judgemental. Accept His love while you still can. If you die unsaved, you'll find Him on the otherside, and you'll find it's too late. Same thing if Jesus comes again - physically. Both times will be times for rewards, not for acknowledgments. There's really nothing you can do about the fact that there is God, no matter what you choose to believe.

See you laters . . . Bye

The fool says in his heart, ‘there is no God’... Psalms 14:1

I really do not mean to insult anyone, but check this out:

It’s just amazing that people actually sincerely believe that there is no God. Their argument usually is that there’s so much that goes bad here, so many going hungry and starving, natural disasters that claims the lives of so many, and so on. There’s no doubt that these things do happen, and it’s sad, really, that it happens at all. But does all that really mean there’s no God?
It’s just ridiculous, the thought of it. People just don’t like to feel bad, and anything that makes them even remotely uncomfortable has just got to be evil. Usually, people who live in regions worst hit by hunger and famine and starvation and the resultant deaths, aren’t the ones claiming there’s no God. The majority of them do believe in God. It’s usually those who see the images, who have probably never gone without food except for when they chose to, who say things like that.

What’s worse is that they are restricted to a specific location per time, and can’t in anyway see the whole picture of things that could earn them bragging rights to say they understand the way of all things and how they work and are inter-related. They’ve never been to the moon (funny enough, I haven’t heard any of those who’ve been there saying there’s no God), the closest extra-terrestrial body to Earth, which is just one planet in the solar system, which is just one solar system in our galaxy of millions of solar systems, which is just one galaxy out of probably billions more, and many more things we don’t have names for yet, stuff that we can’t comprehend in its wholeness.

I love that picture up there. The tiny dot in the middle is this planet, Earth. With our deception of how powerful we think we are, how independent we pretend to be, thinking we don’t need a God because we don’t like the idea of being held accountable for how we live and what we do, doing stuff and not caring about how it’ll affect someone else, pursuing money like it was the answer to life’s questions, disrespecting our bodies, killing our babies, refusing to listen to warnings about global warming etc, we’re doing all of that from that tiny dot in the middle...and this picture was not taken from the farthest part of the solar system. That goes without saying, that if that photo was taken from further away, we’d be invisible! Insignificant – except of course in the eyes of God, to Whom we mean a lot. If this planet was obliterated today, the effect on the rest of the Universe would be negligible or insignificant. Where then is all our stupid pride (yep, pride is really dumb, if you think about it)?

Ubah asked me the other day why I’d want to have kids. I’d never really thought about why, I just know I love kids so much...I think they’re the most interesting and the most fascinating of humans, and sooo intelligent. Their association with adults is what makes them like us when they grow up. Point is, I’d not thought about the why. He went on to say that people who want children usually want them so they can express, or pour out the love they have inside them. He said that was why God created mankind, to find a vessel to pour His love into. Do you think it’s an accident that Earth is placed so that it can inhabit life?

To be continued.... Stay tuned

It All Began The Night Before (2)

Continued...

Same morning I went to work late, the traffic situation not helping. For starters, there was more power outage than there was light (yep, it’s Nigeria), so I couldn’t do much work. What that meant was I couldn’t bury myself in my work and so I was unable to forget all the issues that had been tugging at my consciousness for attention.

Silent desperation, frustration, and despair had been my daily companions for a while now, and all attempts at positivity were proving ineffective. Truth is that there were issues in my life, and questions I needed answered that I was in denial of. I was broke, money wasn’t coming in, and attempts to bring it in were proving abortive; I had been looking for an apartment for months, and they’re really expensive in this city, except for the outskirts that drive me crazy (no fairly stable light, no running water except you have a bore hole, cost of transportation, automobile traffic, poor connecting roads in the outskirts); I was also lonely – among other things. 

I kept asking:
 Why won’t things work out?
 Why are my efforts getting frustrated?
 Why is it taking so long for God’s word concerning me to come to pass?
 Why does it feel like there’s an iron ceiling over me, and I can’t reach God, and He can’t see        me?
 Why this? Why that?

I felt like screaming until something momentous happened, and I told Ubah (my friend at work) that. I told him I was tired on a level that I could not explain. Ubah told me that the devotional he uses (Every Day with Jesus) was dealing with such issues this month, and he had it with him. So, during the ‘black out’ I went through the devotion for the day and the day before, and it spoke straight to me.

The title of the devotion for the previous day was ‘Mistrust – the root of sin’ with text from Psalms 77:1-20
In summary, it said that our negative emotions reveal more than the fact that we are feeling uncomfortable, but also reveal the root of our sin, that is, the suspicion that God cannot be trusted to have our interest at heart. It said that though emotions are generally aroused in a human context, they also reveal something of how we are dealing with God, indicating how we are handling the problems we encounter in the world and the concept we have of God

The current devotion expressed some of these negative feelings as:
Fear – is God capable of taking care of me?
Anger – why does God allow my goals to be blocked?
Envy – God seems to bless others more than me
Disappointment – is God fair?

Both days also talked about being honest with God, instead of being in denial because you’re scared of admitting your issues with Him and how you truly feel.

When I was done, I didn’t feel better, but I felt aware. I still wanted to scream, so I got up and went to the bathroom, closed the toilet lid and sat on it, and began to talk to God, pouring out my heart to Him. I was crying so hard I couldn’t speak, but I knew He could hear through the blubber, and eventually I was sitting on the floor (which is very clean, if you were wondering) and screaming silently (didn’t want anyone barging in). I told Him how powerless I felt, confessed my living in denial, my inability to focus on the Word or confess it in faith right now, and asked for mercy and help.

After the whole ordeal, it felt like a ton of weight was lifted off me. I felt my burden lift, and I felt peace. My mood changed. I was reminded again that He’s my Father (amazing that we forget that reality at all), and of His Word that says

“cast your cares upon Him, for He cares for you” 
And
“come unto Me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest...”

It All Began The Night Before...

I woke up late (6:25 am) to what looked like a regular day, and rushed to the kitchen to do the dishes from last night (not like me to leave dirty dishes overnight, but I was done with cooking really late, and was dog tired). I entered to see that someone had left the tap running, and the floor was covered with water. That was not something to look forward to waking up. Well, I had to mop up the water, do them dishes, then join in the morning devotion (which starts @ 6:30), which I just sat through.

It was the begining of a dreary day, and it all began the night before...

See, I live in the outskirts of a city called Abuja, and heading home from work during the rush hour is hellish, especially for someone like me, 'cos I don't know how to spend an hour waithing for a bus, or run after the bus and fight with people to get on it when it arrives, or spend an hour (at least) in the traffic jam in order to get home. It makes me really grouchy, five evenings a week. So I opted for stayin at my friend's for like 2 hour or until the madness abates.

I live with my uncle, a sweet, elderly man, and a cousin who can't cook, which means I'm responsible for preparing meals (he supplies the money, of course), which really isn't a problem 'cos I have the meals for the week planned in advance (cuts costs for me, and saves me several trips to the market), and we use a gas cooker, which is really fast, so that I'm done with dinner in just over an hour (yes, my ncle comes home late, 
and no, he doesn't eat out).

Problem was, when I got home and started cooking, the gas ran out on me. I was getting frustrated, and didn't know what to do. Ameh, my cuz,who can't cook and was hungry (he'd stopped eating out when I came to live with them), borrowed a kerosine stove :-( from Bubba. K-stoves are pretty slow if you're used to gas cookers, and this particular one had issues, and succeeded in extending cooking time by over two hours. To cut the long story short, I was done cooking at about 12:00 am. Ameh still ate. Uncle had eaten bread earlier and said I shouldn't worry.

With all of that, coupled with the fact that I was so tired I couldn't fall asleep immediately, waking up to a flooded kitchen wasn't exatly how I would want to start my day...

To be continued, later or tomorrow...

A Legend and Icon . . .

Image by lukas lehmann via Flickr

Yesterday was the memorial service of Michael Joseph Jackson, and watching it live was a solemn experience. I found myself actually crying, which surprised me 'cos I thought he was far out there in a world I could only access through electronic media.

He was an Icon and will be immensly missed. I don't think his memory will be forgotten in this world, as long as the earth remains, that is (with the very real threats of green house effects and global warming, who knows for how much longer we'll have Earth? )

I'm seriously trying to get ALL of his albums, cos from my search on the internet I realised that there's so much of his I haven't listened to. I want to listen to everything he's ever sung.

It was also amazing seeing his kids (they're sooooo lovely!) without their veils.

It's also funny (and infuriating) watching all those people (you know whos) eating their words. The lenghts people go to!! Ugh!!!

I love him, and it's sad to see he's gone, but that's the way of all flesh.

Goodbye MJ . . .

Image via Wikipedia

I just keep loving Jesus again and again, more and more! He's given me all His love, it ain't no one way street!


This is my Word from Him for Today

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came into being through Him, and without Him
not even one thing came into being that has
come into being.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness
did not comprehend it it."

John 1:1 - 5

I have recently began the study of the Gospel of John, and I can see why Wikipedia pointed to the difference between the Gospel of John and the other three cannonical Gospels. He wasn't iving a historical account per se. His emphasis is on the divinity of Christ and His oneness with God, and the Life that is obtainable in Jesus Christ, to as many as will freely recieve Him and accept it.

His arms are open wide to recieve any man, woman, boy, girl, and in-betweens, that will come to Him. If you listen to your heart, you can hear Him call out to you, saying

"Come unto Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest . . . "

Think about it. He loves us all so much, regardless of what we know we've done

See y'all soonest