MONDAY MORNING MEDITATION: Face Go Yellow, Yansh Go Black ••• Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. ~ Luke 21:34, NIV ••• ¶ All the signs are upon us. Yesterday, my co-in-law recounted the unbelievable story about the Alhaji who buried a retired customs officer and her adopted daughter alive to cover up his crime. Said the alhaji to the police, The devil made me do it. Poor devil - he gets the blame always! ••• Then, of course, there are the terrorist scourge and horrifying beheadings being freely broadcast to a terrified world. Theres a surplus of ecclesiastical scandals. There are the larger-than-life pastors whose sources of power are clearly not from Christ. Fat, lazy and gullible souls just cant tell the day and night difference between the Holy Spirit and the Angel of Light. Didnt Christ clearly warm that false Christ will arise and deceive many? Will the miracle addicts heed? ••• Indeed, these might be the last days. Might be, because it might not. None of these things, if you know world history, is new. It is established that the human heart is desperately wicked. If any generation ever enjoyed peace and prosperity, it is because the forces of evil that hijack the human heart were kept at bay by godly and courageous men and women. Every generation that lacks godly and courageous people must contend with the kinds of evil that plague us today. ••• If these are the last days, many of us are toast, believe me! Yesterday evening, I fell into bed, exhausted, after we returned from an outing at about 5 pm. I woke up about an hour later to an empty house. Sweetheart! No answer. Chimfeka! No answer? Nky! No answer. I went to their rooms, peeped into the kitchen, knocked on the bathroom doors. My wife, son and daughter were no where to be found! Rapture, I thought! Youve got to be kidding me! Where are they? But hold on … what am I doing here if it was the rapture? Still mildly intrigued, I made for the front door. It was unlatched, and, behold, her car was also gone! After a moments thought, I sighed with relief and went back to sleep. I figured that theres no way she could have gone to heaven with that car of hers. Its an old model 2004 Mazda. Besides, the AC needed repair! You cant travel to heaven with a car like that. Nevertheless, the incident got me thinking more seriously again about eternity. How do I make sure that after running the race, after preaching to others, I myself am not cast away? Paul also dreaded that possibility. Which brings me to the late, no holds barred, afrobeat legend, Fela. ••• A woman in our neighborhood has bleached herself into a rainbow. Now, barely 45, she looks 93. You can no longer tell if shes African, Asian or Caucasian. ••• Nigerian men, Im told, are obsessed with the yellow skinned woman. There are so many yellow skin myths in Nigeria. One is that girls from a particular part of the country tend to be yellow. Another is that a popular bank is perceived to employ only yellow females, and it almost appears true. The strategy might make sense; men would open an account faster with a yellow female marketer than a black one. ••• The women who are naturally born with yellow skin and long hair are considered lucky and greatly admired. But those who arent so lucky had a way out. And thats how the skin bleaching industry exploded in Nigeria. Good skin lightening and toning creams cost quite some bit. Like juju, once you start bleaching, you must keep bleaching. However, the artificial yellow skin does not come without its steep price. Apart from the multiplied risk of skin cancer, the lifestyle is difficult to maintain. When you are eventually forced to stop, you become like the woman in our neighborhood - neither African nor Caucasian. No one captured it better than Fela, in his timeless Yellow Fever - Face go yellow, yansh go black… ••• There are many in the church pews whose faces are yellow and yanshes are black. They use spiritual bleaching - tithe paying, speaking in tongues, religious rituals and religious terminologies - to appear deep, but their hearts are far from the one true God. Your spiritual skin glows in public but your face is yellow and your yansh is black. ••• One of the Scriptures that scare me the most was the one Jesus solemnly declared to Sardis in Revelations 3:1: You have a name that you are alive but youre dead… On a personal level, this, and not boko haram, is the scariest last day phenomenon - many of us having a name that we are alive but yet spiritually dead. Thereve been times in my pilgrimage that that indictment perfectly applied to me. I constantly evaluate and recalibrate. ••• When you come face-to-face with the Risen One, and He looks you in the face with his gentle but deep, all-knowing eyes and declares, I know your works …, your heart begins to pound as to what might follow. From ages past, the devil has used the timeless strategy of the pursuit of shiny objects to keep men from seeking and knowing God. Ogbo, beware the pursuit of shiny objects! Stop spiritual bleaching! May Gods Word defend and protect your soul this week. May your face not be yellow while your yansh is black. ¶ I love you. Have a great week, and be healthy, wealthy and wise! ««««« PS: For non Nigerian readers, yansh is the Pidgin for buttocks. «««««
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 06:39:49 +0000
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