Birungi is distressed. At 40, she remains unmarried. With a high-paying job, she is a well-educated Christian who believes that Jesus died for her sins. At her age, she has attended many weddings, including those of her close friends. Recently, driving home from one reception and alone, Birungi ponders her plight. ‘Maybe it’s true; perhaps I am cursed’ she mutters to herself, silently sobbing.
If God bore your sin to the tree
Then, brother, you are truly free
If Christ carried your curse to the cross
Then, sister, you are forever reconciled
Voltaire once voiced how “In the beginning, God created man in His own image, and man has been trying to repay the favour ever since.” The history of fallen humanity is that we have, since the sin of Adam, fashioned God after our image.
Affliction swarms around us like unsettled bees hunting for nectar. And unless tethered to the tree of life, distress can destabilise, disorient and depress, sniffing out the joy and—if unchecked, ultimately—the life of the afflicted.
My Facebook page was open as I prepared to go for Sunday service this morning. On it was a live feed from a church, and the pastor was speaking. As I listened to him, something restlessly recoiled within me.
How often has someone asked you to not “touch the anointed of God”? Too regularly to remember? Such subtle a command customarily comes out when a certain leader is under scrutiny, justifiably so or not. But have you ever wondered what the origin and context of that warning could be?
A protestant as I am, I privately profusely protested when my Professor placidly presented his case for why Mary is the mother of God. He is not Roman Catholic. With calmness and candor, he clarified the consequences of things being otherwise.
Bodies, are they saved? Will they ever be? Does it matter anyway? Most of us reading this have heard a saying that we are spirits with souls that live in bodies.
I recently watched a BBC documentary detailing the rising suicide rate among Kenyan men. The report, which is ‘part of a series of reports on modern masculinity in Africa’ told of how in Nyandarua County, Kenya, ‘70 people – almost all of them men – killed themselves last year.’
Opulence naturally appeals to us. Poverty repels. Therefore, prosperity preaching is as popular as it is perilous.
