Sprinklings of Joy

Needed to escape the hysteria. Don’t get me wrong – I had an amazing the day at the Medical and Legal camp. So many people to Love and smile at…hugs and smiles back at me. Jokes…photos taken, snacks…so many people from previous seasons…people falling in Love with Jesus for the first time, and then those coming back home. Despite the rain and the flooded halls and grounds, we registered at least 500. Not counting the ones who rushed in at the last minute…and didn’t register. It was an awesome day. I love people…so it was my kinda day.

But I got home. And ‘it all’ came back. Have you ever felt so ecstatically unhappy…you wondered to yourself, if there was EVER a time you were happy? At all? Have you ever felt so desperately broken, needed to go out and wail, but thought again and wondered how you would answer anyone… especially a child…who asked who or what broke your heart? One reason. This time? And suddenly the feeling just fizzles out…as you douse down your sorrows with the thundering waters of soft logic…

Have you ever been so wounded, but couldn’t seek rest and recuperation because someone else would feel abandoned if you did? And then you kinda forgot to check on them, without forgetting them, and now they hurt thinking that you don’t love them enough, or worse, at all, because you ‘weren’t there’s for them ‘when’ they needed you? Am saying something here, without really saying it for legal reasons . Who is missing from your happy/sad parade? Could it be… possibly…that they understand…intimately what this post…not me … is going on and on about?

I went looking at photos of when I believed myself to have been happy…but instead connected with the real feelings from that place…and just knew…my nerves remembered…but the tears were stolen and frozen by the question in paragraph 1 ? What I did with those times, I looked in the mirror and tried to improve on my image. Then immortalized the outcome into photographs I love…covering the story of that second…and those myriad ones after that with color and good make-up. Until The Embrace of God ‘CAUGHT’…and I was taken to ‘another place, another time.’ Beyond that one. Those ones…

Then I got off the couch and called Pastor Anne. We went a-walking. A-Traipsing which is what ladies like us do; Me in my sandals and Dera…items from another time I believed I was happily home. We laughed about this space…sang songs from back in the day when we first received God. When life was complexly simpler than it is today. We encouraged each other as we walked, we laughed, it was easy. God was with us. Emmanuel. Then we run into ‘her’. She didn’t even see us. She had headphones that blocked out the world…and was trying to beat the volume with her own voice that filled the night. She swung her shopping wide with each beat we believed and we ducked as she trotted past us. Such a happy, happy soul. And she scattered glittery divine joy into the souls of strangers that needed to be rained on from heaven just that second. God bless her. God bless her. I just thought to myself, what was I spreading as I walked along…as I passed by people I didn’t really see. Was the effect of dwelling in God’s Presence raining His Joy on them out of the overflow of my own life? Or was it….

Have a joy-filled weekend wont you? No matter what’s going on, and am serious…no MATTER WHAT IT IS….rejoice in The LORD ALWAYS.

Shalom beloved of The LORD.

“He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was Love”
Songs of Solomon 2:4

#Reset #IamInHisPresence 

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

BROKEN HEELS AND MORTALLY WOUNDED HEADS

Where do broken hearts and lives go? To whom will they belong?

So… you are out and abouting...and you see this other human being. Splendid looking. Seemingly DELICIOUS, provocative, alluring….You look, you see, you want, you desire, you crave…but even with those big bells banging in your skull you ALREADY KNOW that its not for forever that this desire had assaulted you …just to rub, to scratch an itch…for a moment. And after a moment or two, you imagine to yourself, that you would do anything to get that scratch…to be rid of that itch. Tell lies. Tell partial truths. Be kind. Be cruel. Buy gifts. Deny gifts – for the majority… Write poetry. Borrow other peoples’ songs to dedicate if you are not lyrically endowed…. Hang out with those you wouldn’t otherwise stand…smile at them even…face the elders and ancestors, argue your case even when it’s obvious – to even yourself – that you have none. Marry them because the itching does not go any other way in some cases. Even if you can only marry them verbally… If you are of a more base conviction, you club them over the head, or subdue them with potent substances…scratch and flee leaving them to deal with whatever you deposited in or on them…and whatever other consequences they have to deal with to pay, sometimes for a lifetime, for the fact that they temporarily assuaged your even more temporary discomfort. Discomfiture. Poh!!!!!

Let me start with some background. Earlier this week, I was talking to a friend of mine, a spiritual friend…I ended up having the same conversation with three other spiritual friends…broaching this subject from three of the four poles. But let me start even earlier so you understand the picture attached to this post. A few years, I was out and abouting myself…on heels. Suddenly one of them got caught between the cracks of a street pavement…and when I tugged…it broke. I had to make a decision – would I walk on and complete my errands barefoot, or balance the other foot to the level of the still heeled one, walk through my day as though I was comfortable and then deal with the consequences as I rubbed my feet at home…in the evening? I opted for the latter. You can’t just be obvious all the time – right? I hope you are understanding this situation from at least three poles…right? A word is sufficient for the wise. I took a picture of my shoes when I got home…and that’s what that…down there…is. My former, or rather, ex-shoes.

So, then this week happened. I was in a situation, reviewing a previous rejection by an association due to a recently concluded relationship. In plain English, my heart was broken, my body and spirit beaten, I could not hold in anything that went in, or keep what was there before. Aside from this, I was mourning the death of one dear one that I had known all my life…and then went through a sharply articulated eviction from a status I was born into, but realized that I would probably have to walk the rest of my life with, only as a memory. Understood? Have you been there? If not, please, I pray you never do. Unless it’s for your good, and The Glory of God. For me…I shed excess weight…drastically, which came with wardrobe challenges for both outer and inner wear 😁😇. If you know, you know. I bowed over and mourned with my entire life, emitting life, it was coming out of all my pores…there is a picture I took late last year…that was…scary…more than one photo from that season…that I was vehemently commanded to unplug from my social media…because I looked dead, or like ‘something’ that was. I WAS…dying. And I knew it. There was nothing I could do about it. But God. He…has ways…Yes He does.

So, I go to this interview…and not really because I trust, but because I find it easier to say the truth and deal with the consequences rather than take time out of what is left of my life trying to remember and defend lies…efforts in futility…I poured out my heart. Are you married? And the floodgates opened. I couldn’t cry anymore, because…I was basically dehydrated…of anything liquid in me. Anything that could flow. My interviewer listened…trying to hide her horror at my story. I could tell what she was thinking. I could NEVER belong. I understood her completely. If I was in her place, I would PROBABLY be in her shoes. Walking her way. Then God caught up with her as she ‘fled the scene’, and she remembered possibly, LOVE. Saw my battle wounds. Saw beyond my ‘dehydration’ that I still believed…that God COULD. So. she passed the rejection to a more vigilant warrior to effect it…to bury me alive if possible. And I went…’to my own funeral’… walked in, sat through the next interview…fought valiantly…clung to God and His instructions when He sent me into this situation…I STILL BELIEVED. And even though the one with the itch had turned their back, even though I was ‘out of status’, even though technically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, I was standing before about eight open graves, I held on. They were beloved of God…and were holding on to what they knew too. From their perspective, they were destroying a bug, me, and doing their best to wipe out the smudge. I was too dehydrated to cry…so I leaned…leaned heavily on God…and on the ones He sent me to Love. Because even here, Loving still made sense. I don’t know if you have ever been here…

They said no to me. And it seemed to me, were offended that I did not die. And I say that in the nicest way I can. You see, they sincerely believed, still do, that I had sinned. That I had rebelled. Was an offensive outsider, an enemy. And that the mercy of Christ could never cover one like me. I on the other hand, knew, that I had been sent. The consequences were none of my business, obedience was. So, I obeyed. And loved. And the scratches became little pen-knife nicks, then were emboldened into stabs. I cried out as I obeyed. I had no one, nowhere, except this place. But God. He carried me through. One day, I couldn’t anymore, so I pleaded with Him, to let me go. The pain was killing me…I was still wounded from the eight open graves…and living in a ninth…alive…waiting for them to shovel in the sludge…so I could be…not even a memory. I began to claw out of that grave…and He, God helped me. I carried guilt for quitting…for letting God down by quitting…but I remembered who was not ready for the next day, if I was to die on that one. And on the other side of the grave, He met me and embraced me and strengthened me and widened the scope of His Love through me. And many times, my eyes would meet those of the most ardent warrior…and I could tell he was thinking that I was doing this to win his approval…and acceptance into association. I could tell also, that he was determined NEVER TO ALLOW IT as long as he was in that privileged position. But I was loving…for The Lover…Love Himself. God Himself. Without Whom I was, am, nothing. No one. No ones…

A leadership crisis and I became a leader in that association, without membership…and it was time again to show me how unlovable I was to God. And to His people. So, I made the appointment…so I could hear him out. And he ploughed at me. Scripture after scripture. God could not love me. But it was different this time. I had been through so much stripping…and had learnt to be strong without cloths, without props, without underwear. They had fallen off me like King Saul’s armor may have off a little shepherd boy named David as he walked in on behalf of a nation to cut off the head of a giant that had troubled them. Like the other Saul, the Apostle a.k.a. Paul, neither the bite nor the poison ‘took’.

That woman from last year IS DEAD. Perhaps they did shovel her and seal her in after all. But this version of her…has her head in and with God. She sees more than you would want her to…and will not react outside of God’s prompting. So, he reeled out how those wounded by family relationships, could not serve as leaders…and I asked if we were not playing into the enemy’s hands. An enemy that would strike the leaders, knowing that their colleagues, their Aarons and Hurs, would drop their hands in a second and use their own swords to gut them where they stood holding up God’s Kingdom should it become evident that their flesh not conform to the standards of their own understandings. And that the flocks would wander off…disappointed, dejected, doubting God, doubting the value of Life and Godliness, choosing Despair, Destruction and finally Death. Where was the place for restorative Love? Why were we using valuable artillery against our own gravely wounded and dying warriors? Warriors called out BY GOD to lead the battles, to lead us into victory…because someone used them as a scratcher…and then got tired and moved on to find more elaborate scratchers. Because their children do not look like the others that belong to the association…So, we not only turn our backs to their pain and to them – we also have our own issues to deal with – moreover we pursue them for learning to live without us…to steal what God would still have them retain, not even to use because the instruction Manual is The Living God Himself AND He HASN’T DECIDED TO TRANSFER OWNERSHIP OF WHAT we STOLE TO us, then, we decide to kill them in myriad ways… Do we really know this God that we have refused to get intimate with, and block others from His redemptive embrace?…Sighhhhhh…. Where are the brokenhearted going to around you? Do you care? Or are they casting a blight on your narrative by being hurt, being hurt in ways unlike ours, and for longer than WE WOULD ALLOW THEM TO BE? Where are the broken-hearted around you, that walk in the embrace of God…and He is strengthening to destroy the serpents that would be aiming at your heels in your own future?

Back to you from the beginning. The one with the itch. So, today is Friday. And you may have that itch again…first of all, avoid me. I am actually dead…and alive to another realm… I am done balancing heels that do not exist for He to Whom I belong, has fitted me with those that CANNOT wear out. And warriors have been activated to defend my course in God AND me, that if you saw with your naked eyes would lead to your own dehydration of both inner and outer wear. If therefore you are looking to complicate someone else’ like – Avoid me. Second, if you do go out and use the image and likeness of God for a scratcher to ‘get your hair in place’ know that for them, it never really ends there. Even if they seem Game. Sometimes…they live with the death you projected their way…several lifetimes over. So please remember my many words… take a brisk walk or run around your hood, then GO HOME, to your habitat and take a cold shower, warm cocoa, put on some fiery worship music and pray for yourself and for your intended victim/s that God would keep them from the snares those, like you formerly were, had dug out for them. Many times, our games deny those we didn’t think we were hurting that much, their very lives and destinies. Be responsible.

Shalom.

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

“Then one of the elders [of the heavenly Sanhedrin] said to me, Stop weeping! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root (Source) of David, has won (has overcome and conquered)! He can open the scroll and break its seven seals!

And there between the throne and the four living creatures (beings) and among the elders [of the heavenly Sanhedrin] I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God [the sevenfold Holy Spirit] Who have been sent [on duty far and wide] into all the earth.

He then went and took the scroll from the right hand of Him Who sat on the throne.

And when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders [of the heavenly Sanhedrin] prostrated themselves before The Lamb. Each was holding a harp (lute or guitar), and they had golden bowls full of incense (fragrant spices and gums for burning), which are the prayers of God’s people (the saints)…

Saying in a loud voice, Deserving is The Lamb, Who was sacrificed, to receive all the power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and majesty (glory, splendor) and blessing!”
Revelations 5:5-12

AMPC

My Ringed Fingers

“What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?“
Jesus Christ in Mark 8:36-37

This evening, I was distractedly looking at my fingers contemplating the two rings that I wear very rarely these days. Gold. Yes. I have two golden rings. One a broken circle with four stones on my ‘wedding finger’, the other on my ‘God finger’ – same finger on my right hand – a beautiful delicate piece graced with a heart at its center. I once tried to sell them…during dire times, but the lady who I had been told buys gold would not buy them. She said what she could give me for them would not be worth the effort. Besides. she had already gone over her limit for buying used jewelry for the day. I was looking at those rings today, or rather last night, against the very soft light at Southfield Mall and just thinking how beautiful they were – in this light.

My thoughts wandered off, and I remembered some really valuable loops I once owned. Gold. Pure gold. Very high quality. One of the only two pairs of real gold earrings I have ever owned. My favorite – the other pair broke where it cannot be worn again, and a piece of it got lost during the myriad house evictions my household has lived through. I wore them all the time, everywhere, so much that I forget how valuable they were, and how dangerous wearing some of those things in some of ‘these places’ could be. So, one day, I was on the way to a place that I had never been, for the wedding of one of my brothers in Love. I think that was the day I tried to sell my rings. I dont know what happened to me when I left that shop but I was not as alert as I usually am while walking. I notice EVERYTHING without lifting my head or seeming to look around. My friend and current walk partner Ps. Anne likes to joke about me, that I should be FBI or some high-level spy. I laugh nervously when she says that…I actually see more than most people would be comfortable with my noticing. But thankfully, I forget quickly…or to be more accurate, forgive with alacrity. Life is too short to carry EVERYTHING you find with you all the way. But…back to what I was really saying. I got a little distracted after leaving that lady’s shop. I wanted to sell the rings so I could get a present for my in-law, as well as transport to and from the wedding and still feed my household when I got home. So, when I found I could not, I tucked them into my handbag and walked about a really densely populated portion of Kenya, praying for a miracle.

Suddenly, it felt as though a friend was hugging me from behind while tugging playfully at my ears. Then there was a sudden release and in the two or so seconds it took me to turn around, I saw a young boy, about 10 years old at most running away from me. I realized that he had been tugging at my earrings and had managed to get one off and that it was in his hands. I thought about screaming for help from the public…but at the same time I remembered my own very difficult pregnancy journeys, and my own pain in the labor wards. I looked at his fleeing back and wondered if I would ever wear that earring, if I had to pick it up from a pool of his blood after the public had dealt with him. I wondered about his mother…and her own labor pains. So, I stood and watched him run from death, from danger, from consequences, from me – his victim. I absentmindedly took off the other earring and a witness who had been standing near me as though he had NOT noticed the whole thing, stepped up to me and informed me that there were shops near there that bought gold to melt and resell. He suspected that that was where the young lad was headed, and I could try to trace his steps and buy my earring back before it was melted. My feet followed his advice. I forgot that even if I found that earring, I had no money to buy it back. I did not even have money at that time to get back home. At the end of my footsteps, I managed to sell my remaining loop for about 3,000/. Kenya shillings. Almost a hundred times less than it was worth in cash and incomparably less than it meant to me overall.

I am thinking about this today because it just occurred to me how much we take for granted what is truly precious, because it’s always there for us, with us. Until the day we loose a portion of it, and have to negotiate with God in public, over the cost of getting it back versus letting it belong to someone else. Someone to whom it may not mean much beyond a few thrills, and who would discard what was attached to your life for a set of pebbles…in less than a heartbeat. What’s your story so far in this regard. Let’s not loose anymore…what we will still mourn over, decades later. Look at who/what you have in the soft and True Light of Who God is. Perhaps, and I hope, He will birth in you a renewed appreciation of what He has given you, that is RIGHTLY UNLIKE WHAT HE HAS GIVEN ANOTHER.

Shalom. Do have a blessed week.

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

God…Seemingly

Sometimes…we look down on a person because of our seemingly elevated positions above them…and God remains seemingly silent…unmoved by their pain even.

Sometimes we betray them, [and because they are spirit too they know it] because we sit in forums where it seems okay to break their confidences and twist what we know about them in the worst ways possible…and God remains seemingly silent…seemingly unmoved by their pain even.

Sometimes…we reward their smiles with scorn because something happened in our lives and another in theirs that sets us up as seemingly superior. Sometimes…we are privileged to see their need…even of us…and we gleefully walk away…because that is the plan with those that we know hate them…and it seems that we are LOVED BECAUSE THEY ARE HATED…like we are RICHER BECAUSE THEY ARE POORER… like we are IN BETTER BECAUSE THEY ARE AT THE BOTTOM…where we believe they will stay forever. We keep our ties with them…because we are determined to do ALL WE CAN to keep them at a disadvantage, because we SINCERELY ARE CONVICTED that their DOOM IS FOR OUR GLORY…

And God remains seemingly silent…seemingly approving by this posture, of our antiques…seemingly unmoved by their pain and our relentless onslaught over them.

I wonder sometimes…why we waste our energies, beating at those that we are TRULY CONVICTED CAN NEVER RISE FROM THE POSITION IN WHICH THEY ARE BURIED. Us and our company. Are we really convinced of what we tell ourselves over them…or is our back and forth, to collect information by which they can be kept down, also a sign that we don’t TRULY BELIEVE that ANYTHING can keep them down permanently, and we hope that they are fooled enough by our smiles, and fake geniality towards them, that in their EVENTUAL rising and TRANSFIGURATION, we would have carved ourselves a position as their ONLY FRIEND?

They know…. they know…from their position beneath us…they are better placed to see our nakedness…and it’s probably the filth they see…and smell, or the fact that God lies there with them…holding them still…that they too remain silent…and allow us to go as far as we believe we can…as we stand over them.

God seems silent, unmoved, uncommunicative, powerless, unloving…far removed today…

But CAN HE REALLY BE?

Shalom.

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

AFTER I AM WORN OUT – THE FALLACY OF ASSOCIATING INCREASED AGE WITH DECREASED BEAUTY

I want to start this with a disclaimer: Although in my youthful days, I may have felt, and perhaps honestly looked like a full-stop in the company of…about all my female friends, I don’t think I was that bad to behold. In fact, I think I was beautiful too. At the end of the sentence/line, but beautiful too. Don’t protest – I know who my friends were and how they looked. Exquisite. The truth though, is that I did not feel beautiful. Not really. I was going through a lot then as well, that did not really affirm me – and although I thankfully, took many, many photographs…it was mainly because I believed I looked far better in them than I did in real life. I am extremely photogenic. Without filters. Extremely…so when you look at a photo of me, especially on a ‘good day’, and you are perhaps thinking, if you are male, of directing our association another way, please…ask God to lend you His ALL-SEEING EYES for a minute . Ahem. I actually look much better from His perspective.

I will be back to me, but let me talk about a lady that has totally inspired me. Sarah Abraham – the matriarch of Israel. Both the half-sister and wife of Abraham. A beautiful woman. Barren in the days when she was considered a great beauty…until perhaps past her 70s. A woman who kings could kill to try elevate to the role of their Queen. Today though, God led me to her story in Genesis 17-18. Just before her story changed. I don’t know if in her youth, despite being constantly reminded of just how exquisite she was by her fearful husband, Sarah ever felt beautiful. She fell short in perhaps the perceptively key role of a woman in her day – that of being a mother. She elevated another woman into her marriage; a young, probably not as beautiful woman to surrogate her divine role in the foundations of her nation, and this woman and later her offspring, mocked her for being infertile. She must have known she was beautiful…and fearfully loved by the most important male, pre-Isaac, in her life. I don’t know if post-Hagar, Abraham lost his vigor and awe at the beauty of Sarah…the passion by which he had placed her in a pedestal from which he would knock her off and hide her identity at the whiff of a threat (O…Abraham and I will probably have to have a candid conversation over this one in eternity. This is one of the stories that absolutely traumatizes me in the scriptures…but well…let me not stray here.) Sarah thinks something here [Genesis 18:12] that just broke my heart today…and probably God’s in her day: ““AFTER I AM WORN OUT and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?” [NIV] HOW NOW? How could she think God Who had just changed her name to put it in Caps would be limited in fulfilling His promises to her, because of some human standard….? BECAUSE GOD – she did get that pleasure AGAIN. In spite of looking worn out, to herself. God You Are Good!

Back to me as I cease tearing down at Sarah and Abraham. Last Sunday, God dressed me up to attend Service at one of our local assemblies. I looked resplendent in Ivory. [Ok, some would say I was in white…but strictly speaking I was in a light ivory]. We had a prayer meeting to pre-dedicate our church sanctuary in the afternoon. After this powerful assembling of God’s people, I passed by our ‘local grocery’ to pick milk and bread and just browse through the aisles and plan for ‘next time I had money to shop’. An ‘old, old man’ [my extremely wounded perspective] approached me smiling as though we knew each other from somewhere. With my memory these days, it is possible we did. Anyway, when he was close to me he said to me with a dark smile “You are my agemate. Yes, you, you. You are my real agemate and we shall soon retire together.” I was…many things…at that exact moment…none of them good…but I probably presented him with a blank but calm look that belied the sudden increased turmoil inside me, and simultaneously decided that his drama could not afford to finance and heal me from the effects of a sudden hypertensive crisis. I walked away. Bemused. When I got to the cashier, a very young girl I asked her “Do I look old?” She was astounded and asked me “Why?” I told her about the ‘old, old man’ I had encountered along the aisles…she did not even smile. She looked at me and said to me. “No. You are beautiful. And you do not look old. That man probably was dealing with his own issues, so forget him.” I cant say I was sufficiently comforted by her words…because his words still rang louder in my mind. And…just…the…wondering why anyone could be that cruel to a stranger… Then I decided he must have been a demon made manifest to move me from the beautiful day I had just had. This comforted me as my thoughts went back to how God had showed up for us.

Still, every time I have seen myself since, particularly through the lenses of my phone camera, I have wondered why I look so old. Perhaps I met with a wizard who cast a spell on me. Not nice. Perhaps, it’s because this year begun, and has prevailed for me with a thoroughly broken heart and it’s probably showing on my face, though it [the heartache] has become for me, one of my closest companions. I don’t know…rejection can cloud one’s lenses, right? But I have been extra critical of myself, even more, since. Not very honoring to God The Artist Who created me. Right? I repent.

Suddenly it hit me – just a few minutes ago: So what? Why would it bother me whether I looked young or old? What would God want for me, that I would be barred from, based on how I or others assessed me with regard to my looks? Why have I associated youth with beauty and age with…errr…less beauty (let’s not even think that word please )? I think I look better now, to be honest, than I have ever looked. Maybe it’s the shackles that anchored the thick veils over my eyes on ‘Ugly Bay’ that have fallen off…but I feel lighter inside…even in spite of the things happening that should make me otherwise. I have no immediate answers to this complex question that plagues my oft inquiring mind. This post is actually more for me to consider five years from today, when I have come to my fullness of true beauty and need to testify to God’s Goodness. But also, for you. Be beautiful/handsome at whatever age you are. However you look. Even if someone foolishly puts ‘old, old’ before your definition because you rubbed them rather roughly upon your first meeting . You ARE BEAUTIFUL. And whether or not you feel it or look it, WILL NOT LIMIT GOD FOR BLESSING YOU AS EXTRAVAGANTLY AS HE LONGS TO DO.

Shalom my friend.

PS: I shared this post with my daughter and my 8-year old grandson. When I came back to the room they watched me awhile, smiling then:

Gio: Dani is not old. Sindiyo Mami? She is young.

Shukri: No Baba…Dani is not young.

Gio: I actually meant that her youth has been renewed, isn’t that right Mami?

Shukri: Yes, yes, yes Papa. That is accurate.

Dani (me) opens her arms and Gio rushes into them with a huge hug. We hold onto each other for about a minute. I dont know if its just me, but there is something about the hug of a child you love, that…strengthens one. Gio does that for me.

Shukri: Dani. You are beautiful. But you also look really sad these days. Dont worry about it though…it will pass. It will be well. It will be okay. Soon.

Dani: (holding back my tears) Amen dear. Amen. This too shall pass.

vipslit@yahoo.ca / vipadhiambo@gmail.com

Jewelry by Shanga na Kanga Designs

GIVE THANKS IN ALL SITUATIONS

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After Goodbye…

THE DISTANCE BETWEEN HELLO AND GOODBYE IS OFTEN SURPRISINGLY SHORT… the time span between the happiest day in your life (ahem…a particular space and season of your life) and the most traumatic, still short. Extremely. The longer you live, the more surely you realize that separations are part of Life. Intrinsically. Life reminds us often brutally, of the privilege we have of being in relationships, associations, vocations, careers…for a moment. And then doors shut, and sometimes never open up to you, again. Forever. Sometimes. Sometimes your try the window, the back door, the gutter, the basement, the neighbor’s balcony…nothing…YOU ARE LOCKED OUT. Emphatically. Of all separations, death is perhaps the most respectable. If it happens well, naturally without human effort or interference. In the sense that you get your public’s ‘permission’ to mourn. Their support. Their participation in the final rites, rituals. Also…sometimes. No guarantees in this life as am finding out. And yet paradoxically, of all separations, death is perhaps the cruelest. The most unfair. Final. You cannot text that last word, sentiment…apology…affirmation…comfort. YOU CANNOT RESET.

And yet today…my mind is on the separation of the living. The snatching up of something that you thought would last forever…that you would present before God as a trophy for lack of a better word immediately, a legacy, your crown in life. At least one of your most precious. And the multiple times that hurts…when you think you have healed and moved on, a day breaks, night falls, it rains, you take a bath, teargas cannister explodes, the look in a baby’s eyes, a joke, a song, a neighbor comes home, calls, a bicycle bell rings, a scent that you always thought was theirs but find actually became yours – together, an annoying habit you blamed them for but find that somehow you became…a name, their name…and your heart breaks. You hear something they said about you, they text you and unexpected emotion almost immobilize you. And for a moment its akin to the pain of standing before an open grave, watching all the explanations go down, and the ground cover these, and you are not ready…and no one understands why you who is Strength in person suddenly disintegrates…why suddenly you take on the persona of a lunatic. You cannot call someone and just cry and they understand. Their ‘get on with it’ tears at you, opens you to battles you never anticipated and trained for. ‘You can and will do better’ and you are still not too sure you want to…and yet certain you do at the same time. The confusion. And you are back there, watching it go down, on your own, your whole being trying to force time to pause, and yet compelled to put in the first fistful of sand…mud…and you are not ready for the onslaught of shovels of mud that cover what was precious…the flowers that cover where it is buried do not, can not in any way comfort you from the horror of what is lost…for a time, or forever. and you stand there stoically, while you want to just to fall down and never get up…be buried along…never face…the things…that come with being without what you have just lost. You are not ready…but here it is. Separation is here. You need your friends, family, but they have good reason not to be there…they still have links to maintain…their hopes…you understand don’t you? You do. You do. Many associations are situational…and you are no longer in that situation Hun.

And you walk away from that grave, to another…grave to grave it seems…varying sizes of graves that you are not allowed to mourn over. To linger…to ask questions, its not dignified…get on with it…accept and move on…we feign it till it becomes our reality. Feigning a healing that never happened because the grieving never did. It was no small matter, but you feel compelled to treat it as such… ‘Mami, my friend is not talking to me anymore’. ABBA, my close friend, the one I dined with, the one I trusted, has lifted their heel, dusted me off and ridden into the sunset without as much as a goodbye. ABBA, the job I loved…is no longer mine; the colleagues I thought were family for a season, no longer know me; the child You gave me after the doctors said I could not have has defined me as dishonorable and unworthy of them; the house I thought I would live in forever actually has another landlord; my country no longer considers me their citizen; LORD the one You sent to help me, is now doing my mission in You exceeding harm; LORD the one who was exclusively mine now prefers a community approach…I get up, I pick up my crosses, and I follow You…

Ahem…I don’t even know what I have said up there…just that separations are on my mind. And that the distance between Hello and Goodbye, the seasons of our lives, can be brutally short. But I am grateful…to have been happy once. Once several times. And to live this Life that I am privileged to live. To have what I still do. To have woken up today. I am blessed.

Shalom.

vipslit@yahoo.ca

Why Doesn’t God Do Something? The Power of Covenant

‘Why, O LORD, do You stand far off? Why do You hide Yourself in times of trouble?‘ Psalm 10:1

“There is only one answer to our title question – GOD DOES NOT WORK OUR WAY. His power is not coercion but constraint. Never does He violate the personalities He has made. It would be easy for Him to intervene, but another purpose is at work – the purpose of constraining love. Hard though it may be, we must have patience with The Patience of God.”

Selywne Hughes in ‘TIME WITH GOD’

This post from about ten years ago, really answers some of the thoughts that ‘troubled’ me last week as I read through Genesis 16.

Why slavery exists…yes, still; why God would allow those already victimized to be re-victimized by others (Hagar was a slave already – bad enough, to use her as a ‘gadget’ to console the visions of an extremely old man was additional abuse…); why its common when we are abusing another – or being ourselves abused – to imagine that we retain the right to dictate how the victim responds/reacts/etc (Hagar’s mistreatment of Sarah when she found out that she could have her mistress’ husband’s child where her mistress couldn’t was probably her finally finding a way to vent the sorrow of her state); why when in need we tend to objectify/dehumanize those ‘who would replace God as Source’ -and justify both sins; why God would have us remain/go back to and continue to endure situations that were inhumane to say the least in the hope a future that was better; and finally why none of the three was condemned, at least not in scripture, for this plan… I think I grieve for every woman and child that was listed in the Bible that endured abuse because it was culturally acceptable. Then.

I wondered also why God would bring a child in this situation. All three people in this mix were wounded…broken…why trust them with a child. It brought me to the power of covenant – agreement and to the words of Jesus Christ later – “Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about ANYTHING you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.’ MATHEW 18:19.

I found out that I cannot out-righteous God. God will not violate covenant, not because He is powerless to do so, but because He cannot go against Himself. In His Time. WHATEVER WE AGREE ON. These three agreed that they would have a baby…and God honored this. BUT THERE WERE CONSEQUENCES, EXTREMELY PAINFUL FOR ALL THREE. And to us in this age.

It’s important to watch what you say ‘Amen’ to [Jeremiah 27:14-15]. I am learning that God punishes, yes that word, PUNISHES, those that walk in agreement to false prophesies/scandals/stories etc. When He says He is going to do something for me, for us, a certain way, a certain time and we go ahead and try help Him by saying or doing something OUTSIDE HIS COUNSEL, there are consequences. Consequences which sometimes seem unrelated to the issue…but are intrinsic to it. It is important to guard what you listen to…especially that- WHAT. Many godly associations, dreams, projects, etc. have been destroyed because we listen, and agree to covenant towards a certain direction. To associate or disassociate. To leave God out of the plan. But as my friend Anne Gichina reminded me earlier today ‘GOD IS IN THE DETAILS’. We imagine Him absent then cry later when He allows us to experience what it would be like if He COULD BE absent…by the way He CANNOT be absent ANYWHERE we go. And we ask ourselves ‘WHY WONT GOD DO SOMETHING TO WORK THIS OUT MY/OUR WAY?’ He remains THE WAY we discarded for this one…

May His Mercy find us in this place.

Shalom.

“Do not listen to and believe the words of the [false] prophets who are saying to you, you shall not serve the king of Babylon, for it is a lie that they prophesy to you. For I have not sent them, says The LORD; but they are prophesying falsely in My Name. [It will only end when] I will drive you out to perish together with the [false] prophets who prophesy to you.“

Jeremiah 27:14-15

vipadhiambo@gmail.com

He Spoke But Its Not Showing

Perhaps God spoke over that issue – to you – quite some time ago. You were minding your business, examining the skies, your prospects and HE CAME TO YOU. HIMSELF or sent someone. YOU HAVE EVEN been anointed for it. And TIME, TESTING TROUBLE and TALK has happened on it, but you cannot just let it go. You KNOW GOD SPOKE TO YOU – but there is a little challenge; THERE IS NO EVIDENCE, IMPACT, VISIBLE OUTCOME. No one else heard it. Others claim to have heard or know different. And God has not made manifest what He said over you. And you are now both THE EPITOME OF ‘Suspicious’ and a ‘Suspect’: Targeted for grave harm. It might help a little, to know that YOU ARE IN GREAT COMPANY. Ask Abraham. Ask Noah. Ask Joseph. Ask King David. Ask the Prophets. Ask the Apostles. Ask Jeremiah….ask Jeremiah.

““From the thirteenth year of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, even to this day, THIS IS THE TWENTY-THIRD YEAR IN WHICH THE WORD OF THE LORD HAS COME TO ME; and I have spoken to you, rising early and speaking, but you have not listened.”

Jeremiah 23:3

The thing is… YOU are responsible for that word. To live it out. To deliver it exactly as you receive it. Not the edited or abridged version. To live it. You won’t go back to God and tell Him that you let go because someone who was not there pushed you greatly to let it go. Live THE WORD. Its BATTLE. And yes, sometimes great harm comes to you because of it. BUT IT IS MORE COSTLY, MUCH MORE, TO SHUN AND DISREGARD WHAT GOD SAID TO YOU, BECAUSE IT WAS NOT WELL RECIEVED BY OTHERS – EVEN THE ONES FOR WHICH IT WAS INTENDED. Remember, GOD IS NOT NERVOUS ABOUT SILENCE – HE DOES NOT JUST SPEAK FOR THE SAKE OF IT. HE IS NOT an idle chatter. HE SPEAKS VERBS (ACTIONS, STATES, OCCURENCES – i.e. Doing Words). In the MEANWHILE, you may just have to take COMFORT IN THE FACT THAT – HE TRUSTED YOU WITH THAT WORD.

P.S. And its VERY NORMAL for others NOT ACCEPT what God has said to you – and MARK YOU AS FOOLISH OR WORSE FOR DOING SO.

Shalom

” But He said, “More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” Jesus Christ in Luke 11:28

#March2023#comeandsee#InHisPresence#BeholdIAmComingSoon

vipadhiambo@gmail.com

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