Knowledge is bliss

I have said it before and i will say it again, contrary to popular belief, ignorance is not bliss, it is a death trap. knowledge and awareness on the other hand is bliss because it is the road to Life.(In the Bible, God says "my people perish for a lack of knowledge")The more i am made aware of this world and the nature of it, the more I am aware of that fact. It's true that we cannot escape this world, and i have no intentions of doing so, for there is much to experience and enjoy on this marvelous planet;but at the same time it can also be a place of much grief and vexing.I had a glorious night out with some of the best women friends i have had the privilege of knowing. And as always, apart from the fun i have, it was impossible for me to ignore or be oblivious to the "crazies" around me. Believe it or not, there was a man who was well into his fifties, who thought he was on the sputnik! all geared for take-off in his silver sequin clad jump-suit!!a grown ass man!!then you have the married guy, still clad in his work clothes, out on the town, thinking he's cool,whose dance moves comprising entirely of inflating a flat bicycle tire, flirting with the young work colleague.And then there was the whole gamut of drunken morons who like to think they are God's gift to women,only to be sadly pointed out to the contrary; and last but not least, the eternal 'Playboys'- otherwise known as "HIV on legs" today-still trying to score goodness only knows what! Now i get the whole "out and about and having fun" thing.In fact that's exactly what i was doing too, and I'm generally not partial to being a sideline critique; But I'm just stating some obvious social discrepancies that seem to make 'night life' down right unattractive!
so, putting on my philosophical cap, i wonder at the final fate of these extremely colorful personalities before me.When death finally comes and life is ended here and about to begin on "The Other Side", what fate would meet them? at that point,with eternity before them, Regret would be a harsh reality.And here is where i become thankful for the opportunity of knowing what lies on the other side. This knowing equips me with the information i need to be make some wise decisions with my life that would save me that eternity of regret! in a day and age when our senses are bombarded with temptations of every kind and on every side, what can a man or woman do to keep from falling into it? how do we resist the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life?Do we even have a chance of doing so? the answer is yes and no. "No" if your heart desires to continue in the way of rotting flesh and substandard morals.Then you might as well "kiss your heart and say good-bye", as Madonna would say (good song though!).But for those of us who would like to continue to enjoy our lives and keep our soles in tact while doing so, the answer my friend is not blowing in the wind, it is right before you , and it is "yes"! Yes by the immense grace given us by God in making us aware that life is more than the here and now. It is much much much much more than that!!! When we say that this life is a rehearsal for the real play, it is meant in a literal sense that would sadly elude most people today. Not because those who get it are of a more superior physical makeup, but because those who don't have a lesser ambition for their lives-(.i.e."I,Me & Myself").so, as for you and me, my dear reader,lets opt for a more noble purpose for our lives and think it worthy of more than living for ourselves.Let's opt to gain knowledge, for we know that knowledge brings purpose and purpose brings fulfillment and contentment, and that my friend is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!

The Love of a Family

At the mention of the word "family", for many of us, it conjures up images of faces that range in ages from 8 to 80. We have the luxury of grand-parents, unties, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces, and of course our parents and husbands and wives. For those of us who are more eastern in our family orientation, we can also look forward to the privilege of "foreign family members" to help complete our most dynamic and colorful family portrait! I am among such a fortunate minority, and thank God for the rich blessing He has given me through this.
For most of us on this side of the world, or of Eastern Parts and influences of the world, this is not an unusual scenario. We know we have the assurance of Yearly Celebrations to bring the whole 'Family Bandwagon' together and enjoy life and love and everything besides. But i realize that for too many people in this life, this is a very unusual if not alien experience. For most people and sadly children and youth, the better part of their lives is one where they are left wanting for love, family and security, in the worst possible ways.It breaks my heart to think that parents can abandon their children without a second thought on some door step and leave them vulnerable to any evil that would come its way. It mortifies me to think that mothers can just kill their new born babies and dump them in garbage bags just because they didn't want them!The World's streets are littered with Murderers, Law Offenders, Drug addicts, Sociopaths and the likes. Desperate cases who purposefully do something, anything so they can get back into jail, rather than be on the streets, because jail is the closest thing they have to a home and family!And when you wonder where all this originates from, Sociology teaches us that, Family is your primary social unit, and how an individual learns to adapt to society is learned first in his or her family unit.So when human beings grow up without a "normal" aka "sane" family, it only means, that each man, woman and child is left to his or her "animal instinct" to survive!And so , survive is what they do.But not too long into surviving they realize dying is better and so take their own lives or choose lifestyles that will hasten its end.This is tragic.This is also the society and world we live in today. Sadly it only gets worse. The ultimate paradox of this world is that the more we know about how and why such atrocities happen, the more we will continue to see them happen.Where am I going with all of this? Family.Appreciate it. Embrace it. Love it.Even if your family is just you and one other member, or even if it's a heap of members, don't neglect it or take it for granted. Why ? Because too many in this world don't have one. We teach our children not to waste food because their are many dying without it. I think its time we also teach our children not to "waste their Families" because too many in this world are dying without one.
A Big High Five to Family! :) 

Qualified to be Loved

In the system of the world, you work for everything. You work for man's approval, you work for man's acceptance, you work for your livelihood, you work for your freedom and you work even just to stay alive. It's a never ending cycle of works. Until that human corpse has breath it's last, it works. And this system of working for recognition and approval, leaves us with a "works mentality" that causes us to think, that, even the very basic need of being loved, has to be earned. I mean isn't that what we have heard? isn't that what our parents tell us unwittingly and what we pass on to our children? Isn't that the standard we set with our spouses? ("unless you do this or that, or act this way or that way, you are not worthy of my love and i will withhold it until i approve of your behavior ).Think about it, from the time we are kids to the time we are adults, and right through-out our adult life, we are conditioned, and even bombarded with the message that everything has to be earned and love is no exception- The more points we earn because of our good behavior  the more we are loved and if our behavior isn't good enough let's not expect to be loved. It's enough to drive any human being to despair and many a man, woman and child, tragically, have been driven to even take their own lives because of this.
And yet the truth about our worth to be loved is so different from that of the world. The truth about our worth to be loved comes directly from the Creator of this world. From the "Big Daddy" if you will, Himself. God says that our worthiness of His love is not based on anything that we have done or not done. His love for us is not based on how many brownie points we have accumulated because of our good behavior or on how much charity we have done, or on how good we have been on average, or on any other such "behavioral indices" that the world qualifies us on. His love doesn't even take into consideration if we are murderers, fornicators, drunkards, drug-addicts, prostitutes, homosexuals or even slanderers! None of that matters to The God of Love. To Him, our only qualification is that we are His creation.That the very breath we breath is His breath in us, qualifies us to be loved unconditionally and wholly. His is the kind of love that, even when we do wrong daily or even multiple times within a day, does not change a dot. It is constant, it is embracing, it is unchanging and it is everlasting- literally!
I can't help but think that if every human on this earth knew how much they were truly loved- how an imperfect soul was loved so completely by a perfect God- how different this world would be.
You see, love begets love.It has never been the other way around. The world always has everything backwards.The world says love me first and then i'll love you. But God says "I loved you first, and if you so choose, you can love me back, but even if you don't, i will still continue to love you." It is impossible to resist such love.It is impossible for any human to go on hating in the face of such love. It is impossible for any human to continue in the paths of self destruction in the face of such love.It is impossible to think one is unworthy to be love in the face of such qualifying love!

" For God So Loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that who so ever should believe in Him, should not perish but  have everlasting life". - John 3:16

Give Good Love

It just struck me that if we are all flawed, our love must also be flawed right? The love we give and the love we get are all imperfect. Thus we can never love well enough or be loved well enough. The examples of love we have seen as children growing up were also flawed. And as life has it, we grow up re-enacting what we have seen in our lives. It becomes natural to us, and so we don't see or realize any short-comings in them; for example if we have grown up with a family who talk loud and rough, we take that with us into our marriages and don't think that there must be a better way to speak to our spouses and children.If  we are used to not seeing and hearing our parents apologize, then we think it's ok to not apologize to our spouse or children and just assume that when you love someone it means never having to say you're sorry; and so on and so forth. So where does this leave us? it leaves us flawed, thinking that wrong is normal.That we should be taken seriously, but if we hurt or offend someone, that that someone should not take themselves so seriously. 

(Like, seriously, are you kidding me ??) 

Let's face it, the only example of perfect love that we will ever have in our entire lives is only found in the example of Jesus, the God of Love that came in the flesh. There is not a single human being alive, that can ever boast of loving his or her own well. But this does not mean that we are without hope of ever leaving a better example for our children. As adults who have hopefully realized that we are indeed flawed and wanting in knowing how to give good love, there is always the option to learn. To learn how to make those who matter to us, if indeed they actually do, know that they are loved. If we make the effort to learn how to love well, and our spouses and children see a consistent effort being made by us to do so, here we will see the impossible taking place. The impossible where indeed each marriage in each generation is better than the last. Not as good or as worse but better. Just imagine the transformation that this can make in our homes, neighborhoods and the world at large? Thinking big is necessary. That way we tend to see and realize that our own little lives that we tend to get so hung up on, is actually part of an intricate plan that reaches far beyond us. Our lives today are partly a result of the decisions that were made by our ancestors long ago whether we realize it or not. so what direction do we want to see the lives of our children and descendants take because of the decisions we made and the love we gave? after all that is what it all boils down to in the end anyway - The love we gave.   

I Need a Hero

"where have all the good men gone and where are all the gods?..... where's the street wise Hercules to fight the rising odds?.... Late at night i toss and i turn and i think of what i need.... I need a hero" - Remember that song ? i used to love it as a kid, and i still love it.I used to love it for 3 reasons- Bonnie Tyler's husky voice, the groovy tune and the fact that for most of my life, this song was my anthem.It still is in someways. Although I don't have many male heroes in my life to choose from I do have many women heroes in my life. But it's obvious when i look at my life and the world around me at large, that a woman can never take a man's place. Do you know that there has always been a universal order set in place, and when that order breaks down, everything else crumbles. The order is that God placed Man in charge.In other words, man was to be the care taker of this world.The primary social unit of this world is a family. Every evil that we see in the world today can be traced back to a breakdown in this family unit. From a juvenile delinquent to a sociopath to a wife beater will all have this one thing in common - the initial breakdown within his or her family unit. So how does a man get the primary blame for this ? in the sole role of being placed as the Guardian of his family.When and if he chooses to abscond this role, then the entire unit breaks down and all suffer for it. We have wives that are unhappy and try to get their emotional needs met elsewhere, children that grow up scarred and broken ( i know because i was there once) and even the man, left with nothing but a nagging sense of being unfulfilled; and so he searches for this fulfillment in drugs, alcohol and sex only to find himself worse off than before.Yet his male pride will keep him from admitting it,and so the vicious cycle continues, leaving a trail of unrealized human potential.
Then i have also seen the rare side where Men have stepped up to the plate and been the Husband, the Father, the Protector, Provider, Friend and Support they were supposed to be.Men who diligently watched over their households emotional, physical and spiritual well-being.Real life heroes. These homes thrived and turned out wholesome, loving, confident and generous human beings into the world. But alas, these are few and far between.
Even the very concept of a Loving God is so hard to grasp because the initial example of that in "real life" is the man that we see in the natural.So who would then believe that a loving, caring, protecting, providing God exists, if our first encounters leave us desiring to have nothing to do with the men that are supposed to emulate Him?

Being a hero is not easy but neither is it impossible. It only requires a courageous heart.

"I need a hero...i'm holding out for a hero till the morning light.He's gotta be strong, He's gotta be fast and he's gotta be fresh from the fight. I need a hero! "  

The Weaker Sex ?

You might have heard the saying that “Man is the glory of God and Woman is the glory of Man”. Does that sound offensive to you? Well it shouldn’t! Hear me out and you will see why this saying actually glorifies both man and woman equally than it first appears to.

Okay, so does saying that man is the glory of God and woman is the glory of man , mean that man is more important than woman in God’s sight ? No! In God’s eyes men and women were created equal. It just means that we were also created with a specific role to play. In God’s system there is always an order to things and a place for everyone; So what this phrase is also saying is that men and women have a specific role, a specific order and a specific place in which we are to fulfill that role. Allow me to explain;

A man needs a woman to complete him, and I don’t mean this is a ‘Jerry Mcguire’ context! God said “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him” (Genesis 2:18) and “so the Lord caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, He took one of the man’s ribs and then closed up the place with flesh* .Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man” (Genesis 2: 21-22)

 God saw that in order for Man to be able to fulfill his God ordained role in this world, he needed help. And the only suitable help for a man is a woman! Now for you single ladies out there reading this, please don’t rush out with the door left swinging on its hinges thinking this is your cue to go get a man! This is so that you will know your role the day you become a wife. As for you married ladies out there, this is so that you can understand your God given value in your husband’s life and be for him all that God has created you to be.

So here’s how it all works: In order for Man to successfully fulfill his God ordained role in this world as the Provider, Protector, Priest and Head of the home and marriage God expects him to be, he needs the support of a partner in whom he can safely trust his heart, home, children and money; and for that he needs a Wife, Mother, Home maker, and Life partner. Woman, you are called to be all this and more in your husband’s life. In helping your man fulfill these roles you become his crowning glory, and thus he is able to fulfill his God ordained purpose in life and bring glory to God. Now if the woman chooses to forfeit her role and not become the glory of man, then the man in turn has a tough time fulfilling his role in being the glory of God. And when that happens, God’s glory is hindered from being seen, accomplished and released in the earth!

So that begs the question, is it then the woman who is more important than the man, and is man the actual weaker sex? No! It is just that men and women were made equally strong and equally important in bringing God the glory, just with different strengths and roles to play so that when a man and woman comes together as “one” in holy matrimony, and they start walking the path that God has laid down before them to walk, they are capable of becoming one unbeatable, rocking team!  

So who then ends up being the weaker sex? No one! But then who brings God the more glory? Both man and woman! How come? let me illustrate this in terms of a house. God is the foundation of that house, Man is the walls, the roof, the outer covering, and woman is the inside of the house; the beautiful interior both pleasing to the eyes and a comfort for the heart. All three together make up for one solid and complete unit. The solidity of the foundation is depicted in the establishment of the house, and the beauty of the house is made complete with the interior furnishings. If there was no house, there would just be a bare plot of concrete. If there was a house, the foundation would have been used, but the house would be bare, lonely. But a beautiful house, built on a strong foundation, beautifully furnished, creates a desire for one to posses that unit in its entirety. Now you might consider that just the house is good enough.But when you have slept on the hard floor for a while, and all you see when you come"home" are the bare floors and walls, you get to thinking that it's lacking some serious essentials.God needs both a man and a woman who knows their calling, are secure in their value and worth to God, to bring God the glory that He has equipped us to bring Him.

“Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labour: If they fall down, they can help each other up. But pity those who fall and have no one to help them up! Also if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be over powered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:9)

So I guess being the glory of your man isn’t all that bad is it? :)

The Sum Total of My Worth

Since my last article-or should I say, moping session; i have since gained some sound counsel. It took another beautiful woman of God, who is also a mother, to help me realize that even though i might not seem to be making some hugely signification contribution to the world on a daily basis, that the time and energy i put into raising my son does have no less than eternal consequences! There is no other woman in the world that can raise my son up to be the kind of human being that will walk this earth with love, integrity, humility, kindness, generosity and good will toward his fellow man.And the way open for me to achieve this lies in the daily routines of washing him, dressing him, driving him to school, playing with him etc; that give me the opportunities to deposit into his heart and soul the kind of values and truths that will make him that human being who could touch the world and even, transform it with his love- the love that was poured into him. I realized that my mundane ordinary routines actually have a ripple effect into the future. It can even change the course of history. There have been many a story where great men have all started from the humble beginnings of their mother's knees.Where the out pouring of her love and sacrifice made an indelible mark in their lives, that carried them to greatness- greatness measured in many forms, shapes and sizes.

To realize one day that my son has grown up to be a man who walks in the ways of the Lord and is fulfilling His purpose in his life, would be my greatest achievement.This is where the ripple will have its effect. This is true of any human child into whom love has been poured into without reservation or hesitation.It is only in the eyes of a parent that the child first gets a glimpse of his or her potential.It is where he/she runs to for building up when the world has brutally torn them down. The only point of unshakable faith in them when they don't have any for themselves.This is true for me as a mother and this is true for you as a parent also. So as i have learnt and hopefully you too, let's never underestimate the potential of our daily, mundane,ordinary roles in the life of our precious charges!