I am...

I am he
I am made in his image, a true reflection
I am unique just as his word tells me
I am filled with his spirit
I am washed of the blood of the lamb
I am not only a christian but
I am born again
I am sold out for christ, totally

I am man,
I am not a perfect being but I strive for it
I am not immune to a fall but I get up stronger
I am industrious
I am a cultivator
I am a visionary
I am the provider
I am the head, not the tail
I am a lover, not a hater
I am a friend, not an enemy
I am father, not a figure head
I am a husband, not "the father of the kids"
I am a brother that cares
I am a leader, not a follower
I am the Olori ebi

I am sharp
I am cool
I am the boss
I am swagger itself
I am the best
I am the "koko"
I am invaluable

I am patriotic
I am black and proud
I am African
I am Nigerian
I am rich in culture and resources

I am all these cos he blessed me
I am OkunrinMetaPlusOne!


'Dare Oladeji

Should I have done that?

I was making my hair in a salon on a fateful day and I had some bars of chocolate with me. I took them along because I knew that I was going to stay long at the salon and I did not have time to eat before going there. After about two hours in the salon, I started munching on the chocolates but I felt selfish because I did not offer anyone, not even the hairdresser’s daughter who was about six years old. I felt like calling the girl to me but I did not know how her parents (both mother and father were present) will react.

I stopped eating them for a while and the girl later came to stand by me, just to see what her mother was doing to my hair. Instinctively, I brought out one bar of chocolate and gave the girl, she collected it and said ‘thank you’, and then she left to meet her dad. I don’t know what she did to the bar I gave her, I want to believe that she handed it to her dad or kept it somewhere to eat later. Immediately after, I asked myself why I gave it to her because I know for a fact that parents always warn their children not to collect anything from strangers. Also, in Africa where the belief in witchcraft is so strong, they could believe that there’s a possibility that I could use the chocolates to initiate their daughter into ‘my’ coven. After all these thoughts passed through my mind, I really wished I did not give it to her but the deed was already done.

Just to mention, all the while when I was making my hair, the woman was begging all the familiar passersby for her sallah gift, because it was a celebration day for the Muslims (they had just ended their 40 day fast). Even when her husband came, she kept asking people for her sallah gift unashamedly, I could count her doing this for about 15 times. This made me to understand that the woman liked collecting things (food, money, etc) from people. So I thought to myself again, ‘if the woman likes collecting things from random people, then she won’t mind me handing her daughter a bar of chocolate’. It was just a point of consolation for me.

Regaining my Fingerprints

Some months back, a sharp bone from a frozen raw meat pierced my thumb deeply. Failure to take care of the injury immediately led to more complications and sharper pains. After a week and suspicion of possible infection, I finally decided to cover the hand with plaster. About another week later, I got rid of the plaster because the wound had healed and my thumb was itching me. The consequence of this is that I lost a large part of my finger print because the surface peeled off, skin deep. It really looked strange because it was very smooth.

I later asked my friend, 'do you think I will gain these prints back?' to which he answered in the affirmative. I agreed with him, since I have not heard about people losing their fingerprints permanently. If that were the case, criminals would have started removing their prints, though I cannot fathom how exactly they will achieve that. Lo and behold, about five weeks after this incident, I looked at my finger and I saw my prints surface. Though they were still faint, but they were strong enough to make an impression on a paper and on my heart. Marvelous of all, they are exactly the same way, form and size of what used to be there. God is just sooo awesome. It only proves the fact that my fingerprints have nothing to do with the finger on which I can view them but they are deeply immersed in my blood line which carry my DNA. So, as long as I have blood flowing through my veins, I will never lose my fingerprints.

How do we translate this to things happening in our lives? You might think that you have lost some things in life and that you will never regain them. As long as you have the Blood of Jesus, the one He shed on the cross for you, flowing through your ‘veins’, you can regain all that you lost. The only thing is that you have to wait for time to do its part. What some of us try to do is to look at the ‘printless finger’ and start trying to draw our own prints on it with a pen or pencil, not realizing that the print has nothing to do with the skin surface but with the blood. Some of us even get frustrated and keep on tearing at the skin or even cutting the thumb off all together. Needless to say, if this happens, we will never ever regain those prints because the medium for God to bless us is gone.

This is a message of hope for anyone who thinks he/she has lost something. Don’t lose hope, you will regain all you have lost, just be patient and remain connected to the source of the ‘fingerprint restoring’ DNA, the Blood of Jesus Christ!

Differences

Why are we all different? Some are rich while some are poor. Some are intelligent while some are not. Some are athletic while some are fat slobs. Some are eloquent while some are stammers.

The book of Genesis made it very CLEAR that we were made in the image of God. As we all know, God is ever present and all knowing, in other words, He is perfect. God pointed out that man needed help and are therefore not perfect, that is why he created Eve (the helper). Coupled with the fall of man, this made our imperfections obvious and glaring. That Gap was however bridged by the sending of his only begotten son (Jesus).

After reading my devotional guide this morning, I got a clear picture in my mind about why we all are different. The Bible says we are all part of the same body, we all have different roles to play. 1Cor 12:21 explains that one part of the body can't do without the other irrespective of the level of importance or attractiveness of each part.

Personally, I think the reason we are all somewhat different is because God made it so. He recognized man’s deficiency and made up for it by making a help meet for Adam. After the fall of man, a gap was created between God and man and Jesus Christ, as earlier said, came to bridge that gap. If we as Christians follow the Christ wholly, our imperfection will be made perfect.

'Dare Oladeji

Emotional Cheaters

I put up a post last year about crossing the line between fantasy and cheating. There has been a trend of emotional cheating in many marriages lately. This is rampant among both Christians and non-Christians marriages. We have people that we bond with in different ways and this is most common in the workplace. Some get into it intentionally and others just find themselves in such situations.


First case scenario

Healthy marriage, but there is this beautiful lady at work, they are ‘just friends’ and they do every single thing together. He now looks forward to being with her, weekends are now boring because they don’t have the excuse to do things together. He is not cheating on his wife sexually but he is no longer enthusiastic about her company.

Second case scenario

Unhappy, almost destroyed marriage. Wife is always pretending to be happy at work, but not enough to fool her close male colleague. She starts to confide in him, and they both develop a soft spot for each other. They bond on all levels and he becomes a way of escape out of her abusive marriage. Now she is happier and she has a reason to live again. She can now enjoy d sessions of love making with her husband so far she is picturing the face of her colleague at that time. She has not yet slept with him but she has been seriously fantasizing about the act, they are both waiting for the ‘right’ opportunity and they know that it is just a matter of time before it happens.

What we should ask is where exactly our marriage is right now and where we want it to be. Will emotional cheating on our spouse get us to that desired destination or take us far away from it? Ponder on this question.

What is she doing here?

I was recently led to work with the teenagers in my church, and like my curious self, I have constantly been studying their ways and mannerisms. Needless to say, I have observed a lot, both positive & negative.

On a particular Sunday, a girl in her late teens walked in and she was practically naked. Her back was completely bare and her front her breasts was barely covered, her hair was fixed to look like an old school Rihanna style, her skirt rode far above her knees. Adorned with her designer bag and neck and hand bead, she looked like she was going to a night club. When I saw her, my jaw dropped, she walked in with two other girls who were also flamboyantly dressed but still looked descent.

The first thing that crossed my mind when I saw her was ‘which parent allowed her child to leave home like this?’ It was bad enough dressing like that but worse when the intended destination is church but I tried to compose myself so that my face won’t betray my thoughts. I am sure the same thing was going through the mind of other adults. One mixed race boy of about 13 yrs of age behind me suddenly said, ‘where do they think they are, they don’t even know that they are coming to church (hiss)?’ Now hold it there, didn’t she dress that way so that other teenagers could admire her and see her as a hot babe, why the opposite reaction from them?

I thought to myself, what could I do now? Maybe I should just walk up to her and ask her to go out and dress properly (no, that would be very unchristian and unwise), or maybe I should just look for a scarf for her to cover herself. After a while, I managed to ignore my longing to solve the problem.

As I teenager, I have dressed crazily, I wore spaghetti gowns (I still do), I wore contrasting pairs of earrings, I sagged my jeans, I hung my baggy dungarees on a single strap, and when I started realizing that I am a lady, my grandmother complained that my tops were always too jumpy, my earrings were too big and my lip gloss was too shiny. If any part of my stomach showed, she would pull my pants or skirts up, and hold it wit safety pin so that they won’t ride down again. This was quite understandable as I am her first granddaughter and my mother was just tired of me. The only person that seemed to ‘understand me’ and wanted to be like me was my younger sister, which also was not surprising since I was the only elder female influence she had in her life and she admired my independence. So, you wont blame me for being shocked when I saw ‘sister scandalous’.

Where are the parents, who have they relegated their duties to, the school, the teachers or the church? We need to be aware of the kind of children we are nurturing and take an active position in their decision making instead of raring breeds who will eventually become a potential danger to their generation.

Sticks and Stones

When I was in my early teens, there was this guy (let us call him Jamal) in our neighbourhood that liked me. He was in a boarding school while I was in day school. There was a time he came home from school for holiday and bought me packed rice, perfume and a card. I appreciated it and he went back to school.

A month later, my siblings and I were having home lesson after the daily school session. My brother came and said that Jamal came home and asked a neighbour of mine to give me something. I asked how Jamal could come home and not make an effort to see me but my brother responded saying it was impromptu and he had to go back immediately. I accepted the package, in it contained what looked like another packed food and a wrapped gift. I decided to open the package after my lesson, but my brother kept insisting that I should open it right then in front of everyone because he was hungry, he even asked my lesson teacher to support his plea. He, my lesson teacher and my sister kept asking me to open it so I finally succumbed to their pleas. I opened the aluminium foil packed food first, what did I see? Sticks, stones and broken pieces of glass. The neatly wrapped pack was just a dirty, empty bottle. I took a glance at my brother, who was laughing loud and hard by now and just shook my head. I looked at my lesson teacher, his laughter was enough evidence that he had been in on the plans.

I was just thinking about my days as a child and remembered this funny incident so I thought to share it.

Showers of Blessings

I was in church on a fateful Sunday morning. It was a combined service, the kind where you spend about six straight hours in church, with longer prayer, longer praise, longer worship and finally, a very lengthy sermon since all the services are combined into one.

Some minutes into the prayer session, the pastor asked us to hold our neighbour’s hands, minding that we should find a person who is passionate about prayer. I held someone’s hands, and we flowed into prayer. While praying with my partner, I was hearing one brother at my back, seriously ‘kabashing’ and I said in my mind, that’s one fierce prayer. I was also praying very fervently but mine could not be compared to his.

Later the pastor said we should change our partners, the aforementioned brother’s partner was eager to leave him and pray with my partner but I considered this strange. I was left to pray with the brother, I assumed it to be a good match because I felt he would ‘kabash’ all the demons out of my life. So we started praying and next thing, the brother held my palms tight, shaking me vigorously, started shouting loudly into my ears, and guess what the heavens were opened.

Drops of liquid were all over me. Brother was spitting profusely, I had to look up to be sure whether the venue’s roofing had suddenly developed a fault, because this seemed to be more than saliva. The prayer lasted for about 10 minutes. I had to endure spit all over my hands and face. I managed to pray but it was quite difficult because I was seriously distracted. I kept turning my face left and right in order to dodge the liquid slaps, I was squinting and squeezing, anyone looking would think I was entering the spiritual realm and finally, the prayer ended. I took my face towel and cleaned my hands and my face. I blogged this on my phone, with the guy sitting behind me and hoping he’s not trying to see what I’m typing on my phone. Thank God for His showers of blessings.