Here Is My Heart - A Thousand Times

Since 2am, today, I have been hooked on this particular song, Here Is My Heart, by the band Jesus Culture. I have played it incessantly and sung along more than I can count - most of the time with my hands raised up to the heavens.

I can’t explain why, except that this song ignites the desperate longing to give all of my heart, my soul, my strength, and my mind to my Father and God who loved me first.

Though it is a very simple, short song, it is very true to the heart. I hope you enjoy listening, and I hope it means something to you too:

Artist: Jesus Culture
Album: Your Love Never Fails
Song: Here Is My Heart by Kim Walker

*Video, Courtesy Youtube.

The Kabiesi's Complaint: We Too Are Spirits

May the truth of our inner selves show us some tolerance. For either of ignorance or forgetfulness we've acted with apathy in regard to our origin and identity. We've acted as though we are nothing of the spirit.

Frantically we go about speaking out our fear of *Abiku. We accuse her of being alien. We say she' s a foreigner with no bearing in our midst. For what! All because she's labeled Abiku, the spirit child?

Yes, she's spirit with all her oddities. But what else could she be other than what we are. You villagers, hold your peace and leave the little one alone. If you think her strange, you too are strange. For like her, you are spirits born of a spirit God.

"Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness..." - Gen 1:26a

*Abiku, "predestined to death", is a Yoruba word used to mean the spirit of children who die before reaching puberty (precisely before the age of 12), and also a class of evil spirits who cause children to die. In my own view, it is a superstition that has cause a lot of psychological pain to familiars because of the stigma associated with the spirit child. (Reference and Source from WWW.SACRED-TEXTS.COM

Trials, As We Face Them

It’s been said to the brink of definite belief that God has an awful sense of humour. And unsurprisingly, it is hard to argue when you see God and his ways through the eyes of logic. More so, if you try to reason out the sense in seemingly undeserved trials that He allows to happen to us - trials that we’d all be more than happy to do without. 

However, the truth is, difficulties come to everyone of us, in different shades, for different reasons. Still, I think for many of us it isn’t just a matter of life not being a bed of roses; I believe that more than that, there is a purpose and a reason why God would permit trials in our lives. 

And it is God’s will that we rejoice in the face of those varying challenges by no other way but by the way of faith. For it is only through faith – not logic – that we can truly see His wisdom in the whole scheme of things.

"And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, who have been called according to His purpose." - Romans 8:28

*Image from www.Heartlight.org

Though It Be As Scarlet

With God, it’s different. No matter how grievous the sin or how offensive the rebellion, He’s always eager to forgive us and love us no less than He did from the beginning. Unlike an aggrieved lover, He’s not interested in falling–out over whatever transgression we might have committed against Him. Instead, He’s excited and enthusiastic to reconcile and put to right our relationship with Him.

In fact, no wrongdoing on our part can be too high or wide to separate us from His love if only we’d waste no time and come to Him for his forgiveness. For His mercy born out of His love for us has no beginning or end. It abounds in excess; and why, because He loves us unconditionally. Yes, He loves us so, and it’s important we know and never forget that He does.

For a lot of us carry ourselves as though we have no hope, presumably, in the face of a God who’s awfully judgmental, with no understanding of our weaknesses or imperfections. On the contrary, God isn’t like that at all. Knowing Him helps to see that what He desires most importantly is not to judge or condemn us, but to deliver us from the chains of sin, so that we may be free to live the life of complete liberty and delight, found in His Son Jesus Christ.

Hear, in the first chapter of the Book of Isaiah, the Father says, *“Come now, let us reason together….Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” Can you beat that? How uncomplicated our God is – He says, “Come now” let’s get it over with, let’s settle the matter and be done with it already. For all He wants is to be cool with us. So let’s not delay, but come to the throne of grace where mercy and love waits patiently, for us all.

*Scripture passage is from Isaiah 1:18

*Photo From Flickr

This Is Just A Misunderstanding

“A baboon laughs at the buttocks of another baboon.” – Kenyan Proverb

This place, a section of Kaduna’s prison, is where they keep me along with the ones they call the “civil lunatics”. In my own opinion, the state prison service couldn't have come up with a more admirable name for mad criminals.

Admirable too is the way Prison warder Jubril introduces the inmates whenever the politicians were visiting for inspection. With a prideful smile, capped with bushy whiskers, he would say, “You are very, very much welcome to The Prisons of the Civil Lunatics”. As though, with proper scrutiny, one couldn’t tell too quickly that the prison was not the same thing as the place for the gifted students of Kakuri Immaculate College. It wasn't a place to be proud of but a place for sick, crazy people, of which by God I do not belong.

My cellmate, Felix, feels the same way too, feels he doesn’t belong here. But the difference between us is that he is really mad. Yet in all his jabbering, he makes a good case – a case he's made to everyone by now. “I need help!” you'd hear him say coherently, and then in between he'd go on and on with a peculiar language that the rest of us still find hard to understand. But usually, the conclusion of his talk would bring, with some measure of clarity, the point of his argument, “I'm really not mad, this is just a misunderstanding”.

*Photo Courtesy of the BBC