Beautiful ashes, scattering about on the early morning breeze;
A solemn frigid welcome is what was expected,
An overcast sky and a lingering dawn.
It is a new day but night seems to persist;
Each season seemingly more turbulent than the last.
Persistent night, made bearable only by merciful flashes of Light.
Eternal Echoes
Who knew that a sound
Could be so loud as to echo into eternity?
It was the sound accompanying the event
That sent ripples through time – forward and backward.
An event beyond the confines of time and space,
Its echoes preceding it – promising its sure occurrence.
Echoes forcefully sustained by a universe unwilling to forget.
A Morning Prayer
Gracious Lord, it’s a new day with its troubles.
Hear my prayer, and incline Your ears to my humble petitions.
In Your faithfulness and righteousness, bring relief to me.
The Lord’s House
How lovely are Your dwellings, Lord of Armies!
My soul longs, and even faints for Your courts.
My heart and my flesh cry out for You, living God.
No place is safer than where Your altars stand, Lord of Armies.
Every living thing would love to make their home near Your altars;
For what better place is there to have rest and raise their young?
Identity Crisis
Identity is a strange thing. It is something that should be obvious but can be strangely mysterious. There are many, especially the young, who are going through an identity crisis. One dictionary defines identity crisis as a period of uncertainty and confusion in which a person’s sense of identity becomes insecure or unstable. An identity crisis usually occurs when there’s a change in a person’s life, and can also be due to a change in their expected aims or role in society. An identity crisis is a type of existential crisis. Existential crises generally have to do with questions and inner conflicts about the meaning and purpose of life. As thinking beings, reason and purpose have a central role to play in how we go about life.
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A King’s Benediction
King David is arguably the most beloved king of Israel. Besides being a king, his songs and psalms have had great impact far beyond his time. Myself and many others have identified with and found solace in his expressive demonstrations of love and faith even in the midst of hardships and doubts. In this psalm, this beloved king declares a blessing over his people in word and song. Words of encouragement and faith in times and seasons of trouble and unrest. We may not have leaders today as beloved and as attuned to the plight of their people as David was, but we can still identify with and find solace in his benediction to his people. As leaders in our homes, families, communities and organizations, let us take some cues from his rule-book, and be sources of encouragement, hope, and blessings for those placed under our care. There are better days ahead.
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The Burning Bush
I, like many others, believe that God is. But I also, like many others, wish I could meet God like Moses met God in the burning bush encounter of Exodus 3 and 4. Moses’ encounter with God is one of the most iconic, most recognizable and unique instances of God revealing Himself to a man recorded in Scripture. Note, this was not a vision, or a dream, or an impression, or an imagination; as the Scriptures indicate later on in Numbers 11, God makes it clear that He speaks to Moses face to face, not in dreams or visions or dark sayings or riddles. So yes, though I believe that God is, and I believe in His Word, I still wish to meet Him like Moses did.
Sometime ago, God revealed to me that He’d already granted that wish (but in classical form, He had done it not in the way I was expecting). Then He went ahead to show me how the burning bush experience that Moses had in his time, was his (Moses’) version of what we would call in this dispensation, ‘the born-again experience’.
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When Love Wept
Join me on a journey back through time,
Way before the episode at Lazarus’ tomb,
Very close to the beginning of a beautiful story,
In the perfect garden, where all things should have been rosy,
Love wept…unseen, unheard, unconsoled.
In the face of betrayal and death;
At the pain and thought of losing
What He’d literally invested Himself into;
Love wept…bloody tears, to make room for Hope.
In times of loss and pain, I’m reminded of hymns like:
“Be still my soul, the Lord is on thy side…”;
But how does God console Himself?
“Be still my soul, the Lord is on thy side…”?
One ordinary-seeming day, Love wept…unshed tears.
What Is Man?
I am not unlike the words of a spoken-word artiste;
I am a work of art, and not a simple one at that…
But what I truly am, I cannot confidently guess.
I am what I cannot completely define;
The product of a Master beyond constraints;
A thought from a creative Mind without confines
And birthed in Love from Hands perfect for every work.
I am His breath trapped in a mould;
A divine spark merged with an earthen work of art
In a mystery beyond unravelling though born in Light.
Easy
Tell me that it’s easy,
To rise up each morning at the break of dawn
To set your knees in that spot in the mat
With the perfect grooves made from wear;
A testament to the consistency with which they carry
The weight of your desperation and dreams.
Tell me how you’ve gotten used to the familiar aches –
The pain of the strain of holding a position
That under different circumstances would be called corporal punishment;
Hands clasped underneath chin,
Elbows scraping the edge of the bed…
But none of these compare to the aches
That rampage in places the eye cannot see;
None of these compare to the screams that no ear hears –
None, except One.
Makafui's Journal 