Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? Mat 6:27 

Fret not thyself – Psalm 37

Who doesn’t worry?

Life, in its mysterious ways, raises many questions, and we meet them right from childhood. And the tragedy is that as life progresses and expands, so does the mind, and so are the questions it throws in one’s path, until one is reluctantly forced to concede that what the Preacher wrote a long time ago is indeed true, that, ‘in much wisdom is much grief.’ Where is this road going? What lies ahead? Will it bring me home or will I be eaten by a lion? And half the time these questions arise, they always presuppose something worse going to happen… and so not knowing exactly what, therefore we worry! Are you married? And how did you feel on the night preceding your big day? Did you sleep?

And it is interesting that David, perhaps the chiefest ‘worrier’ of all time should have written a psalm asking us not to fret! For about a third of his psalms ring with a lone voice crying to God to deliver him from his enemies, with Saul being the single greatest threat to his life, and so much so that he had been very certain that one day he would die at the hand of Saul! And so we know that much from it being an encouragement to us, but chiefly it was a testimony and encouragement to David himself, as it is written, ‘but David encouraged himself in the LORD his God.’

 We worry, and half of our lives is taken up by it, about job, love, sex, food, cloth, marriage, death and life in general. We worry. We are terribly insecure. And worrying does not even listen to reason. It just rears its head, uninvited, and like a car with a drunken driver, it runs wild. But in the end we achieve nothing really by worrying, except getting sapped. Asaph worried. It depressed him. Others were getting rich while he was getting poorer. Asaph almost lost his faith. Are you anywhere near that at present? Please don’t – find out what Asaph did (Psalm 73).

David was always in the mire, and mud always almost covered him. Job’s life had almost come to an end – but not his worrying. Even being in good health does not shield one from worrying. Job’s friends’ worrying and descent into ‘miserable comforters’ happened without their knowledge… Adam worried… he fenced, he threw punches at himself… yet one cannot fail to notice (or even fear!) at the almost grand calmness of Eve… The disciples of Jesus worried… Martha worried… and Mary… ‘Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. ’ Elijah worried…and he didn’t even remember Mt. Carmel… and which prophet didn’t worry? What about old Moses? Even the entourage in the wilderness was a worried one… what of the spices and the garlic onions which they left behind in Egypt? And what of the men who made them feel like grasshoppers? And their worry naturally morphed into bitterness… and heavy death followed thereafter. Worrying kills completely eventually. A lot of stroke victims can testify of the worries which plagued them just before they lost consciousness…

Drugs are always a Poor antidote to Worrying

We take drugs to kill worry… but how long does the worrying sleep? They make us sick instead… and being sober and in a hospital bed alone and not in a bar room with all that din… to be absolutely sober and alone and in a hospital ward… you would think worrying might multiply but the opposite actually happens…it is the sudden clarity of ‘all things’ which actually scares! Even the silent groanings of other patients in the room turns the whole world upside down… worrying is terrible… But sometimes not worrying is even worse!

Having a clear Perspective on all Matters of Living will shield one from Unnecessary Worrying

Allow yourself a clear perspective, some things change, the body changes, slowness will set in, interest will dim… sometimes our worries happen because we refuse to accept the inevitable… at above fifty things will certainly begin to decline… one can’t do one hundred laps now whereas while young it seemed like a child’s play… So it is better for one to have a proper perspective especially on those small matters of living and which suddenly can provoke so much worrying… Change happens, or it will certainly happen sooner or later! Even Paul who used to preach standing up the whole night knew when his time was up… Even Abraham and Isaac and Jacob… perspective didn’t escape them… as they started to put their houses in order while they were still alive… They were ready for any eventuality, but we have an even greater urgency now than them, as it is written, ‘Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh’ (Mat 25:13). 

Praising God works Magic, And the Devil Hates It!

Yes, praise God, and scare the devil! And the worrying will inevitably leave you alone. The devil just hates it. Or convert your worrying into a creative pursuit… our mom’s knew this better…it is why they never stopped knitting even when they were attending a funeral! And it is why they live long years… way, way long after men have gone to sleep. Or write your worries down. Our thoughts can get jumbled… writing…keeping a journal … helps one trap his thoughts …and worries, and it helps one put one’s life in proper perspective. It is scary but true…one can be worried without knowing they are actually worried…but writing brings that to an end. And so ‘LORD, make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am.’ 

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Why Human Traditions Are So Popular

 

Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers. 1Pe 1:18 

 

Humility is alien to human traditions

Human traditions are popular because they appeal to our primeval instincts… the urge to bully, to fight, to conquer and subjugate. Traditions abhor weaknesses especially in men, instead they heap praises on a raw fighter, a natural born brute, a ‘war machine’, and self-made man (See Okonkwo in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe).

 

In a traditional set up the end justifies the means – there are no moral scruples to make a man guilty. But Jesus life, character and teachings are not so inspiring to a traditionalist. Who forgives his enemies? And who can be led to his death without a fight? And who can die for other people? These are the characteristics of a weak person or a fool, and not a ‘strong’ person. And so how hard it becomes for a purely natural man to understand Christian humility because well, it is not natural! But humility, like salvation, is a gift from God.

 

Colonialism and its aftermath

By nature we aspire to the highest forms of living. We want the best, and royalty is the highest state of living we know here on earth (hence the world's fixation with the British royalty lives!) White missionaries from Europe did a great service in bringing us Christ and God. But they also brought us their languages, their manners and their cultures. The aftermath is that these left our forefathers with a deeply ingrained mark of inferiority concerning our own cultures; while we perceived everything white as being superior. And up to this day these beliefs persist much to our own detriment (See Black Skins, White Masks, and The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon). We became angry yes (and rightly so!) but our incessant anger has only become pervasive, extending quite insidiously not only to our own selves, but to everyone and every statement we regard as ‘demeaning’ to our Black culture. It is an anger which has not only exploded inside us, but it has also come out and burnt everything we deemed as beautiful once, including our own skins... And so many even today cannot quite separate the white man’s God from the white man’s colonialism. For many, they simply threw out the baby and the bath water, and they shut their doors!

 

But let us never forget the debt we owe to the missionaries who left the comforts of their distant homes to come and settle amongst us, to preach Christ to us, to educate us, and the schools and the hospitals they built and left for us and which continue to shine forth as beacons of hope… yes let us remember them, and let us pray for them and their nations at all times. To forget that is simply to be ungrateful, and it is utterly unchristian. And shall we forget our own? No, God forbid! And so for those who are there at present, and for those who were there before, we salute you all in Jesus name! (Heb 6:10).    

 

Christianity is for the poor in spirit

And so, at heart, Christianity is for the brokenhearted (Isa 61:1), for those who feel most their own helplessness, their own worthlessness, those who are without strength, those who have come from the cold, the dejected and the failures of this life. Christ is truly a refuge for them. And in Christ we find a resting place. Are you at a place like that at present, dear friend? In Christ, you are truly home. Welcome, you have nothing to lose but your ashes…

 

It is why in Africa Christianity is thriving, because here we can feel most our own ‘under development’ whereas the most developed countries of Europe feel absolutely no need for a savior… And so we get to understand why Christ said it is very hard for a rich man to be saved… And so too we understand why Jesus told the Jews that publicans and prostitutes were on their way to heaven before them (Mat 21:31).

 

For the Jew, a pure bred traditionalist, he had big issues with this Christ (as our own traditionalists do), because his birth was repulsive and not aristocratic, for his eating with sinners, and for dying on the cross, the ultimate symbol of humiliation for the proud Jew. And so Jesus wasn’t a savior to them but a failure, he lacked ambition and he wasn’t enterprising… and it is why, when a Jew prayed, he started with his own merits… (Luke 18:10-12).

 

But we, who are the downtrodden and rejected, feel greatly with Christ, ‘For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren’ (Heb 2:10-11). In Christ we have a kin. Do you? He can be your brother too, friend, your helper, and your every need, for ‘I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.’ Yes, listen keenly to that knock at your door tonight, for he is eagerly waiting for you to open…

 

 

Singlehood: Living the Hidden Life

Art thou bound unto a wife? seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife. 1Co 7:27 

It is that subject which you will never hear being preached in church, unless it is on a wedding day, and where it is always mentioned in a most contemptuous way. Weddings or dowry celebrations are those places where a single person feels most lonely. The singles are usually derided, ridiculed and generally made a laughing stock. If you are single and you are invited to those places, you need to pack your sense of humor to the hilt, but if you don’t have it don’t go, because it will depress you.

But first let us admit the obvious: it is not normal, and the first instinct a person gets is that it is a rebellion! It doesn’t matter that it is scriptural, but tradition rules against it. Here in Africa it is usually placed in the same category of behaviors which are regarded as ‘western rot.’ And even today many church goers believe Solomon’s Song of Songs found its way in the Bible by mistake. How, they ask, a book containing salacious words like ‘kisses’, ‘breasts’, ‘thigh’ ‘bed’ and ‘sleep’ be included in God’s Most Holy Book? But thanks be to God. If the Bible were wholly a work of man’s own inspiration, all the characters in it would be angels! The information which we would miss from such a Bible would be staggering.

Celibacy is not Paul’s Original Thought

A lot of people assume celibacy came with Paul… but no, it is just that Paul, being celibate himself, devoted a whole chapter to it (He may have been married before in his earlier life, or he may have been widowed… but the Bible is not specific on this matter... And celibacy though synonymous with abstinence, but they do not exactly mean the same thing). In this letter Paul had been answering questions raised by the Christian congregation at Corinth concerning many topics, and celibacy is just one of them. So Paul gives that direction, but being very careful to differentiate between what is his own opinion and that ‘of commandment.’ And he begins by his own view: ‘It is good for a man not to touch a woman…’ The rest is an expansion on this theme, where he delineates the merits and demerits of the same, and which he sums up in the following statements, ‘For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that… Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called…for it is better to marry than to burn’ (1Co 7:1, 7, 20, 9b).

And so Paul lived what he preached, and the one thing which consumed him most was the return of Christ… For him, it was very imminent, and there was no time to waste on anything else in life, even rejoicing! ‘But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; And they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not’ (1Co 7:29-30).

‘As unknown, and yet well known’.

The life we live is an epistle not written with ink but with our lives, wrote the apostle… and yet (and for most) that life is very much hid with God in Christ, as he extolls elsewhere… (Col 3:1-30). We don’t see faith, but we know it is there, we don’t see hope, but we avow it, and we shall love, though it be but a rose full of thorns…

So we may feel like we never quite know Paul well, or Christ, or God…these we may feel them distant sometimes, as if something existing only in the periphery… and we may have lost that original fervor and power, but we pray we shall not lose so great a salvation… ‘which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?’ (Heb 2:3-4).

No, though we don’t conform to the traditions of this world, though we be ridiculed, though we be hated, maligned and regarded as old fashioned, but yet we shall not give up in ‘contending for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.’ As it is written, ‘We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed… As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things’ (2Co 4:8-9; 2Co 6:9-10). For to lose this is to lose everything, ‘But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul’ (Heb 10:39).  Paul fought a good fight, he finished the race, and he kept the faith, and shall we not fight a similar battle up to the end?

And so we passed through death into life… we forgot what we had known all our lives to embrace a life which no one had seen… We know Golgotha, and we know the garden and the empty tomb, but we shall not dwell here forever… we shall move on to Galilee now, for that’s where the new life really starts. So where have you been called to go? I know there is a wedding in Cana, and it is good, and we shall probably return there some day… ‘Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountains of spices.’ 

The Good and the Bad in Traditions: Only Christ Can Really Set Free

they are all estranged from me through their idols. Eze 14:5b 

If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. Joh 8:36  

Traditions are good in that they bring order in society. That is always the aim. Without them what would ensue is chaos. And what they achieve is always for the benefit of the whole society. That is what our traditions did. They served their purposes (and they served it very well, for the good ones) - but that was only for their time, as scripture says, ‘To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven’ (Ecc 3:1). 

We have now come very far, and we shall never go back again to where our forefathers were. There was The Old Testament and now is The New Testament, and the one was a shadow… a prefiguring of the lives we are living in at present… and yet the final is not even here yet. More changes are still to come.

Time is dynamic, and never static, and so is change, and so are our bodies, for one time we are babes, and then another time we are adults, and later still we grow old, we break, we die… we become dust.

Just like traditions.

But with the exception of one: God.

So has his claims been proven? Have they withstood the test of time?

Yes.

Why?

Because everything in history was driving towards this end - his story.

We came from him, and we shall always be restless until we go back to him.

Is this claim true? What has been the testimony of our lives?

I don’t know yours. But I know mine. And this is that testimony…

What I believed as a child

Even before I got saved there were certain beliefs which disturbed me, like that one cannot be rich in this world without cheating… or that a bright child carried the genes of his father, whereas a foolish one had the mind of his mother…

This was just one out of many… Which ones do you know and are still current?

I felt that ‘everybody’ made money the whole basis of education and living, but deep in my heart I felt this was not right... I felt a dissonance… a discrepancy… the stirring of a sour note… a jarring of conscience…

But I didn’t want to be different. And I didn’t want to be lonely. Rather I wanted to please all and be accepted by all. Which child doesn’t, Lord?

But the Child Spirit in Me Refused to Die!

There is much truth in Calvin’s observation that the grace of God is irresistible. I was only a child, but I felt heavily the darkness which was slowly encroaching on my life… and it made me very afraid.

But later I felt ashamed that I had allowed myself to ‘feel too much’ about these ‘very small’ things’! Why wouldn’t I agree with ‘everybody’ that they were right and I was wrong? But I grew up. And as an adult I forced myself not to ‘feel too much’ about ‘anything’. I concluded that ‘everybody’ was indeed right while I was wrong, and ‘everybody’ was ‘normal’ while I was abnormal. So now I became ‘normal’ like ‘everybody’, and I thought my life would be easy after that. But it had never been worse!

‘What had I done?’

That was the question that kept recurring in my mind. What I had done was to overturn the values which God had put in me as a child. And I hated the child spirit in me. I was an adult now, and doing certain things earned me respect among my peers, like lying, being angry, and stealing… But still I felt this was wrong! I felt false! And I felt greatly oppressed by this sort of double life and which I didn’t believe in in the least bit! This wasn’t me!

But I quickly reminded myself that I was now ‘normal’ like ‘everybody’. But it was a ‘normal’ which hurt and which was very painful. I felt a deep hatred for the society which had made me like this. And I felt even a heavier loathing for the God who had created me like this… why would I not feel ‘nothing’ instead of ‘feeling too much’? I became a cloud that was carried by a tempest. And I became a well without water.

Only the Truth of God can Set one Free

Do you, or have you ever felt something like that? Do you ever feel ashamed about what you believe to be right?

Do you feel that some traditions you profess are oppressive and are only holding you back from being your true self?

Do you value simplicity and authenticity?

Please don’t feel ashamed about it!

Does lying make you feel uncomfortable? Please it ought! And what of fornication, and stealing? Yes every evil thing should leave you feeling ashamed, because it is lying to the truth… and it is the sure way of digging oneself deeper into a bigger hole…

Being Different is not Always about Rebelliousness, but about Truth

If only parents would understand this!

But how shall they know it?

Preach to them prayerfully.

But if they still oppose you take comfort in his word.

‘Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword [division]’ (Mat 10:34). So Christ again says, ‘He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me’ (Mat 10:37).  

Right is right and wrong will always be wrong. These values will never change. If to choose Christ is to choose foolishness so be it…

And so Paul can count all things as loss compared to the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus… And Peter can fall down at Jesus' knees and cry, ‘Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord!’ And again, ‘the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.’ It is the child spirit which prompts one to say something like that, and don’t crush it! It is only a child spirit, and it is only God who gives it, and in strength he makes one feel like seven adults.