Runaway Beast Part Two

The mob quickly found their man, there wasn't much hiding space. Blows and kicked landed on his body as the first arrivals began venting their anger on him. He knew it was only a matter of time before his demise. The lone policeman nearby seemed hesitant to involve himself in the melee, but was busy calling the station for reinforcements. He didn't know which one he feared more, imminent death at the hands of the mob or the assault that awaited his kind in the local prison.

The leader of the mob, the victim's uncle, dragged him by his long dishvelled hair onto the market center amid cries from the trading women baying for his blood. Then came the father of the victim with a machete in his right hand and a block of wood in his left. ''Choose your death'', he growled. The perpetrator was too stunned to talk and so the father took the initiative to land a blow from the wood squarely on his temple. He passed out immediately, death could now come, he couldn't feel anything else.

The coldness of the cell and the stench of human waste woke him up rudely from his slumber. The police reinforcement had come just before the father used the weapon in his other hand to finish him off. Now he was in the cell, alone and afraid, no longer assured of anything. He couldn't return to the past and undo his mistake, and oh how we wished he could. He knew he had a problem but had never sought help for it, now his problem had overwhelmed him and the only solution seemed to put himself out of his misery. He took off his tattered and bloodied shirt and quickly made a knot. He tied it against the window grill and wrapped the noose around his neck....

Runaway Beast

He turned around sharply, just in time to notice the stone hurtling his way. It grazed his cheek as he narrowly avoided full contact with the projectile. His legs were strong and he especially needed them to be at that particular moment. With loyalty, they carried him farther and farther away from his assailants and he disappeared into the jungle of traders and buyers at the local market. It was an extremely narrow escape and he knew it. Luckily, he only had a small scar on his face as a visual reminder of his near-death experience.

The mob continued relentlessly searching for him in the market. They knew him, after all, he had been among them for a while. They had trusted him with their families and property, and he had disgustingly betrayed their trust. The small child he had abused still lay in hospital, under critical condition. The mother had caught him in the act and raised the alarm. He had managed to knock her down and flee but not before the others had heard the cry and realized the cruelty of his actions.

He could hear them shouting in the streets as he hid behind the local slaughterhouse. The stench of blood and animal entrails was a small matter compared to the fate that awaited him if he was captured. He could hardly breathe for fear of the mob. Closer and closer the calls approached him, as if someone had seen him run inside the building and alerted the rest. Now it was very clear that they knew he was inside, and it was only a matter of time, before they got their man......

to be continued

Electric Fence Lions

He looked around and his options were only two, death or certain death. The lions approached slowly and menacingly with carefully calculated movements. The government-installed electric fence was behind him and he could hardly move a muscle. He knew this was the end. The noise of the bar disco on the other side of the thicket attempted to muzzle the frenzied attack as the lions made their final move.

Her wailing was incessant, her high-pitched screams shattering the veneer of toughness that the men around her tried to put up in her support. No one knew how to react, they had never had to bury a man slain by their neighbouring beasts. Until now, the fence had always been a welcome barrier preserving the peace between man and beast. Now they knew that the inevitable had to happen, for once a lion tasted human flesh, it had to be put down. The prized tourist attractions had to die, for the men to live.

The last of the tourists waved a sad farewell as their plane took off. They had seen the famed lions of the plain for the last time, and would be the last tourists to see them alive. The lions seemed aware of their impending doom, anxiously foregoing their usual midday siesta as they paced the plains and roared in unison, a last concert of hair-raising proportions. The poison-laced darts were muffled but effective as one lion after another fell with a lazy thud to the ground, proudly looking death in the eye. One man's death, killed an entire family of jungle royalty, one peasant, many kings.

What would God not do for you, for just one of His beloved. You are more precious than anything the world has to offer. The entire world is not worth your eternal soul. God took our form and died in our place, so that we would not have to die for the sin that was so rightly our own. He paid the price, so that you wouldn't have to. What have you done with Jesus?

Convenient Friendships

The world of football (what Americans call soccer) offers a lot of opportunities to learn valuable lessons on life and its realities. When things are going well, people will put their idolized footballers on every possible pedestal and stop short of canonizing them. They become something like small gods whose 'small errors of judgement' can be laughed away. When the team is losing or playing badly, the once-revered heroes become the objects of ridicule and hatred. One week ago, many people were singing the praises of one Cristiano Ronaldo, then a few days later he was being criticized for apathy and inefficiency in front of goal. Same thing happened to Robin van Persie of the Netherlands.

This behaviour is not limited to football fans, or sports fans in general. This is a common human trait, they will love you when you're up, they will kick you when you're down. It is as if the typical human response to a fellow man's downfall is to smugly thank God that the same fate has not come their way. There are those who will empathize with such sufferers, but there are similarly those who will silently enjoy front-row seats to the movie of your pain. These are convenient friends, laughing with you when all is well and laughing at you when stuff gets tough.

How do we respond to convenient friends? How do we handle people who only love us when we are on top and then kick us when we are in the gutter? We love them! That's what Jesus said. He loved those who strung Him up on a tree, loved those who lashed His back, loved Him who betrayed Him thrice, loved Him who gave Him up to the High Priests, loved us before we loved Him, loves us even when we fail Him. Love Beyond Reason is a book by John Ortberg that wondefully highlights this theme, and it's the book I just finished reading. Love them, especially when this love doesn't make sense. Face it, you aren't much better either.

My Fault

The European Football Tournament is well under way and a few teams are already planning their early return home having been bundled out of the tournament in its preliminary stages. Now the blame game starts. Some players and coaches will begin to apportion blame on their team mates. Some will keep silent although they already have a scapegoat in mind for their failure at the tournament. The most hurt will blame the referee perhaps.

Very few of them will want to accept their part in the failure of their team to progress into the knock-out stages of the tournament. Even fewer will be vocal about their role in their teams' abject performances at the event. Some coaches will lose their jobs while some will quit but they will go down fighting, never accepting that they could have had better results with different tactics or squad selection.

We are not so different from them. We also want the praise when things are peachy and we look for someone to blame when things go awry. We desire nothing better than to always be on the side that wins, and that is why some of us don't really have an opinion on anything. We would rather wait for the winner and then go with that person or team. When was the last time you owned up to something that was your fault? If you made a mistake, accept it, take the consequences, learn from it and move on. Life has so many opportunities and we can waste valuable time and opportunity denying our actions and motivations instead of progressing with God's unction.

Good Background

God continues to work out for good those things that seem to have only our pain as their goal. God continues to use our mistakes to shape us into more useful people for His ministry. God continues to use our friends to point out our areas of weakness so that we can edify one another in our walk together in Him. God continues to lead us to the broken so that we can strengthen their feeble knees and lift their weary arms.

We are never so low that God cannot lift us. We are never so lost that God cannot find us. We are never so depressed that God cannot comfort us. We are never so alone, that God cannot be our company. God always has our best interests at heart, even though we hurt those interests with our selfishness and high aptitude for sin. God counsels, encourages, rebukes, exhorts, comforts, disciplines. God will sometimes remain silent, and in these moments we realize how much we need Him to communicate.

Are you lonely, hurt, disappointed, rejected, depressed? In all things, God works out good on your behalf. You may not see it now, but it will surely come to pass. Just prepare your thanksgiving for you will need to give Him praise once He has sorted out your mess. Or, you can give Him a downpayment of praise, as you await your deliverance. Trust Him, He is painting your future on a Good Background.

How He Loves Us

There is a song that has been playing in my mind and spirit for the last few weeks. I listened to it as many times as I could on YouTube and tried to find as many different people singing it as I could. The song makes up the title of this blog post. Sometimes we do stuff that's so bad we wonder if God can still love us, if we haven't yet reached the point of no return, where we become destined only for destruction.

This song, along with the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Galatians helped me to realize how much God's love outweighs our actions. This is not a license to go around looking for opportunity to mess up, it is just a reminder that those of us who have already messed up are in the right place to receive forgiveness when they seek it from Jesus. God reminds us of this promise in 1 John 1:8-9, He is faithful and just to forgive, always willing to receive us back when we return to Him.

Just in case your life has been characterized by spiritual or moral failure in the past, either recent or far, there is grace available just for you. If you seek this forgiveness from God, you are sure to get it.  He doesn't rejoice in our failure, but sees it as an opportunity for us to learn from Him and to lean on Him. Cast all your fears, anxieties, failures and regrets upon Him, He does really care for you. That's how much He loves us.

God, Change and Musicians

I went to the most awesome concert I have ever been to recently. It was in a German town called Bochum, and the main artists of the night were the Casting Crowns band from the USA. Of course they were the ones most of us really came to listen to, but the other bands were a pleasant surprise. Gungor Band, the Outbreak Band, Leeland and Johannes Falk were all in attendance and they each gave their own interpretation of their musical experience and taste. It was lovely, from the set up of the sound to the instrumentation to the vocals, the lights and the interaction with the music lovers in attendance.

It was amazing for me to see Germans with their hands lifted up in worship, eyes closed, loudly singing out the words of the songs as one band came after another. It seemed every band that performed that night had been given the freedom to freely express themselves, and they did. Most bands talked about a new move of God, and about revival in Germany. They highlighted the importance of a relationship with God. Before anyone could think about the revival of the country, they had to think about personal revival.

It is amazing for me because my country, Kenya, has many things that need to change. Before our systems of government receive change, the mindset of those in government has to change. Before we have leaders worth standing in line to vote for, we need to examine ourselves. The leaders we have are mostly a representation of the kind of people we are. The police wouldn't take bribes if we weren't so willing to give them. Our politicians wouldn't bring tribal politics to a gathering if they knew we didn't want to hear such fitlh. Before anything around us changes, we must change. Before you impact the world around you, you must experience similar impact in your life.

Silent Noise

Sometimes we really seek to hear the voice of God speaking to us. Other times we aren't so sure we want to hear what He would say about the situations in our lives. When we engage in things that we know God doesn't like, we hope that He will look the other way for the duration of our sins. When the deed is done, we seek God out again, hoping that He will accept us back with no conditions and that He will use us anyway to bless His people. Many of our pastors encourage us that God doesn't love us because of what we do, but that He loves us in spite of what we do. Our pastors are trying to encourage us to depend more on God's grace than our actions, and they are completely correct. We, however, are misusing grace and using our pastors' encouragement to assuage our feeelings of guilt. 

Sometimes God calls us to something incredibly intense. Something that will completely alter the way we live and act and the choices we make. Sometimes God seems to speak using every available thing and person around us and it becomes increasingly hard to ignore Him. Your Bible study time, the sermon in church, the concert you attend, the movie you watch, even the newspaper. At this point, it becomes incredibly hard to ignore the call any longer. It is especially difficult when none less than Mark Hall of Casting Crowns tells the story of his struggle with his call into ministry and it exactly echoes your own. You sit in the chair as the people around you dance and sing in excitement and all you can give back is your heart and eyes busy fighting off tears.

That was my experience yesterday as God's calling in my life climaxed at a concert. My eyes were closed, the music didn't matter any more. God was at work, silently speaking into my heart as He shut out the environment around me. At least He restricted my crying to something internal, although a few tears managed to escape. I could not resist Him any more, I had known for long what He wanted me to do and He wanted to seal the deal last night. Now the process begins, and He has to tell me where we go from here. 

Coming Fruit

I attended a small group meeting yesterday evening. In attendance were some Theological school students as well as people like myself who don't know too much theology. The topic of discussion was Sanctification, basically the process by which God makes us more like Himself and the scripture reference was 1 Thessalonians 4:1-12. It was quite interesting to note the confidence with which the members of the group spoke and shared what they had in mind. I am used to people adding the words ''maybe'' and ''in my opinion'' when contributing to Biblical discussions, but those words were conspicuously absent yesterday.

God does indeed take us through various processes in order to remove some undesirable qualities from us and replace them with character traits that are a better reflection of Himself. He does this through His Holy Spirit. God is not limited to one method in this process. For some of us, God may choose to strip us of our 'riches' so that we may learn to depend on Him. For others, God may overload us with 'riches' so that we realize just how empty life can be when we have everything we think we need, and yet lack God. Sometimes we may feel lonely in a crowd and in that very moment realize just how much we need real friendship.

As someone rightly said, a gift is an immediate thing, received and used as desired by the receiver. Fruit, on the other hand, takes time to be nurtured into growth. So although we desire to see the fruit of the Lord's work in our lives, we should take care to be patient with ourselves. In due season, we shall produce fruit. The important thing is to stay connected to the vine. Remain in Jesus, He is our source of nourishment and sustenance. Do not despair because of your lack of fruitfulness, stay rooted in Him and anticipate a harvest. John 15 

God at Work

I have been to this place three times before, and it always has a special effect on me. It is in this place that my commitment to the work that I do is reaffirmed and I get to believe again that this is what God would like me to do for the foreseeable future. I am in Lutherstadt Wittenberg. I spent three life-shaping months here in 2008 and grew as an individual and as a team-player as well. Now I am back here and I immediately find myself immersed in the deep end of old friendships. We pick up our friendship exactly where we left it and it is hard to tell that we have been apart for so long.

A good friend of mine once pointed out that a relationship is a summary of shared memories. Good friends most likely have many things they have experienced together, whether good or bad. People in love  also get to create joint memories that they can build their love upon, some pleasant and some that they would rather forget. No matter the character of their experiences, the important thing is that those experiences belong to them and give personality to their relationship.

Our walk with God, complete with its good and bad moments, forms the character of our relationship with Him. For some of us, our relationship with God is characterized by unending feelings of guilt for letting Him down innumerable times, whereas some of us are proud because of our 'sinless lives' and walk around expecting everyone else to live according to our high standards. The important thing is that God is still walking with you. As long as you are walking together, there is still hope. Sometimes, there are mistakes, failures on our part, but in spite of them you have to keep walking. God is just as concerned with the process of making you more like Him, as He is with the person you will become. God isn't giving up on you, so please don't give up on yourself.