Every new day I'm Blessed to see

                                                         Every new day I am blessed to see


                                                      Gladly will my heart declare his praise


                                                        For all my delights in Him contained


                                                            None else for me but Him 


K.Oni

Cleaning up the polluted air

I needed a way to discourage her from loving me. The cold smiles and hard shoulders had no effect nor the neglect of my cares. I knew if I played the fool and helped her in this fancy it will in the end be too much of an heartbreak for her soul and mine to endure. I did not love her nor did I want to see her hurt. It became practical to forsake her company and to delight in nothing concerning her. Friends I could not play but an enemy. In all of this her love increased, it stemmed higher and higher till at last, on a cold cloudless evening I arranged for her and I to go out for a meal. We sat in a rather obscure restaurant, with no class at all and offered her no drinks at all. She in her love and care bought me a drink even after my adamant refusal and with bold radiating smile stared passionately into my eyes which made me uncomfortable and sad for I could not return such vivacity. In my heart I thought her a fool, a loving fool who deserves a better man than me. In this process of thought, I asked her why she liked such a guy like me? I have been horrible and played a wicked friend by neglecting you much. Why still chase after my steps or still possess any hope that I will love you?

She stared at her drink taking her eyes away from mine; for a moment she said nothing and I perceived she was thinking of what to say. She lifted her passionate lively eyes and began to declare her reasons why it was almost impossible for her to desert her love for me. She said ‘you were the first guy who ever looked upon me with tender eyes of mercy and love. You looked at me and never looked away. You wanted nothing from me but what I am. You spoke to me as a friend, you invited me into your house and played games with me. With you I found a friend, a spiritual friend who brought much colour into my dull life. At first when these heavenly feelings began to arise in me I fought it but to no avail. I prayed that they should flee but it remained. Then at last I could but make peace with it and I began to notice that you knew. Then your character began to change because I knew that you wanted to discourage me from loving you. I tried to fulfil your desires but to no avail. I am forever lost to these passions lest it leaves as it arrived. I did not desire it but it came, one morning I woke up with it and I pray one evening I will sleep with it and it will not return. But until then my heart is given to you, it longs for you'.

This declaration of hers made me want to repent and plead exceedingly that I was very sorry for treating her in such a bad manner. Forgetting my pride I did open my mouth and asked her to forgive me and without reflecting upon my apology she said she had already forgiving me. She also continued and began to say ‘I know that you do not have my eyes nor my love, therefore you need not worry about the dynamics between us. As much as I would like us to be and to one day enter into that happy union which our blessed God did give to our first parents, is almost an impossibility, yet, I will not crouch upon you nor stalk you. I will still enjoy your presence as before and only wish and ask of you that you treat me as your friend. It will be unbearable for my soul if you should treat me as your enemy for I will not be able to forgive myself. So please treat me your friend and enjoy your company as you used to’.

I admired her spirit to bear with this unrequited love and in my heart I made a solid resolution to treat her as my friend. I did begin to smile once again and glad we did meet up to clear up the air. Perhaps this is a lesson some could take, that instead of walking in a polluted environment, one can in one evening take up their cleaning materials and clean up the polluted air.

K.Oni

You are what you read

On the way to work this morning, were you reading the Metro, The Financial Times, the Booker Prize winner or War and Peace? Were you listening to commercial radio, Radio 4, a sermon podcast, or your iPod on shuffle? Maybe you didn't read or listen to anything, but engaged in conversation with your travelling companions, be they colleagues or children, spouse or strangers. Whatever choice you made, it informed the way you approached the day and the perspective you have on events in the world and in your world.  

Charles Moore wrote an excellent article in the Telegraph this week, which purported to be a review of 66 Books, a series of performances at the Bush Theatre inspired by each of the 66 books of the Bible. It developed much more, though, into a review of the Bible itself and its value to our society.

Refreshingly, Moore did not focus solely on the literary merits of the KJV, as has been the temptation for so many - not least arch-atheist Richard Dawkins - in this 400th anniversary year. While acknowledging its place in the great speeches, poetry and literature of our cultural landscape, his point is not that losing a knowledge of the Bible impoverishes our engagement with great literature. Rather, he says, “If the words for the great truths are no longer held in common, how can most of us find them?”

The King James Bible, he implicitly acknowledges, doesn’t just contain great stories; it contains truth.

When we had just one translation of the truth, which was chanted by school children every day, and murmured by “prince and ploughman and everyone in between” at every high-day and holy day, marking every change in season and in life-circumstance, both the words and the ideas behind them permeated the public conscience and shaped, subconsciously, their understanding of the world.

For better or for worse, we now live in a world in which there is no single source of information, no one overarching message being shared or received. Freedom involves freedom to listen to more than one idea, and to choose for yourself which ideas – or which bits of them –  you accept and which you reject.

But with freedom comes responsibility. As James K A Smith points out compellingly in Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation, we are absorbing messages all the time, from advertising and newspaper headlines, to the values espoused in the movies we watch, and those promoted by the shopping centres we visit.

It is incumbent upon us to pay attention to the messages coming at us day after day, and to guard our hearts from being captivated and shaped by ideas which are of the world, not of the Kingdom. I suggest that the most positive, and the most effective way, is not to rant, not to write strongly-worded letters to the editor of your favoured paper, not to condemn, but to create. Smith states that “our worldview is more a matter of the imagination than the intellect”. The translators of the King James Bible created a literary work which communicated truth by capturing the heart. The writers and performers of 66 Books are communicating their responses to that truth by appealing to the imagination. We will communicate truth better by telling stories than by giving lectures. So what stories are you telling about the truth of God’s work in the world, and who are you telling them to?

Jennie Pollock, communications editor for Newfrontiers
The Evangelical Alliance 

I shall not want

Blessed are the people whose God is the LORD; blessed are the people whose shepherd is Christ. They shall never lack, they shall never want for he will lead them into the paths of righteousness, he shall sit them on green pastures, he will carry them through the rocky terrains and none of them shall perish. He sits with them at noon in the shade and before the sun sets he washes the dirt of their wool. He is the shepherd of their soul, the captain of their ship and every day he never fails to pray for each one. 


He has his rod and staff to comfort them, his manner is gentle and meek. He overflows their cups and anoints their head with oil. His sheep never lack for a good shepherd he is, the very best, trained by His Father of whom none is greater.


My dear friend, Christ is your shepherd, you have no reason to want. Do you believe he is ahead of you, guiding you and leading you to green pastures? Before you get there my friend, it is necessary to walk through the hills and rough grounds; it is necessary for him to walk you up the high mountains and expose you to the dangers of the wild. The path is not easy but hard, the path is not smooth but narrow. It does not lead to death but to life; it is marked with trials and hardship but there is enough strength to see you through. Your friends will leave you, your family desert you but Christ your shepherd will never forsake you. Are you sad because of your loneliness? Fear not; for many are they who have become your friends, brothers, sisters, Fathers, Mothers and children. They are all on this path on which you walk. Only persevere through your current trials and soon you will see the foolishness of your doubts. With Christ you shall never want, you shall never lack; so settle with your soul, tell your soul to stop its seeking of other treasures whose end is vanity. Speak to it to stop the wants of the fleeting treasures of this life. What is it that your soul is aching for? If it is not Christ then you must depart with it, you must throw it to the flames, you must feed it to the dogs, you must spread it on the ground like crumbs that the birds may feed on it. Leave it to rot and desire only Christ, desire His kingdom and righteousness, desire his glory and pray to him to help you desire his goals. He is a kind shepherd and knows of your struggles, He is flesh and blood like you and think him not a stranger to your trials and temptations, He is your shepherd.  Say now to your soul, Christ is my shepherd I shall not want. 


K.Oni

Seven Things the Bible Says About Evil

How can we reconcile God's sweeping control over creation with the existence of such horrors as cancer, famine, genocide, sexual abuse, tsunamis, and terrorism? Voltaire sums up the issue nicely in his "Poem on the Lisbon Disaster," written after the devastating Lisbon earthquake of 1755:

Ill could not from a perfect being spring,
Nor from another, since God's sovereign king.

His point is that since God is good, he can't properly be the source of evil. Likewise, if God is all-powerful, no one else can thwart his intentions. So we're stuck, it seems. Who's to blame for the suffering we experience? Though we lack the space here for an extended discussion, let's consider seven biblical affirmations.

1. Evil is real.

That is to say, we distort the Bible and do ourselves a profound disservice by minimizing the existence of suffering. God invites us to acknowledge our pain. The Psalmist wrote, "I believed, even when I spoke, 'I am greatly afflicted'" (Psalm 116:10).

2. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

In some ways, talking about a "problem of evil" is a false start. A better quandary to start with would be the problem of sin. How quickly we rush to raise a self-righteous fist while our other hand digs in the cookie jar. "Yet you say, 'The way of the Lord is not just.' Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?" (Ezekiel 18:25).

3. God is good.

Whatever we say about God's sovereignty over evil (and say we will; see below), we must never imply that God is corrupt, that he somehow nurses a dark side. "Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am being tempted by God,' for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one" (James 1:13).

4. God ordains all things that come to pass, including evil.

God does whatever he pleases (Psalm 135:6). To be sure, this means he clothes lilies and feeds birds (Matthew 6:26, 28). But he also makes lightning (Psalm 135:7). He strikes down firstborn children and kills mighty kings (Psalm 135:8). Our God holds sway over the good, the bad, and the ugly. "I form light and create darkness," he says. "I make well-being and create calamity, I am the LORD, who does all these things" (Isaiah 45:7).

5. Man is responsible for his actions.

Lest we fall into fatalism, we should remember that God's sovereignty never excuses wrongdoing. When a man commits murder, the blood is on his hands. "For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed!" (Luke 22:22).

6. God did not spare his own Son.

The cross speaks to our theology of suffering in at least two ways. First, it shows us that God can will something to happen that he opposes. Proverbs 6:16-17 tells us that God hates "hands that shed innocent blood." And yet he sent his Son to suffer precisely that fate. Is this a mystery? Absolutely. But it is not nonsense. We can look at evil and with no contradiction say, "This is wrong, and God has willed that it take place." Listen to how Peter describes the crucifixion: "This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men" (Acts 2:23, emphasis mine).

Second, the cross demonstrates that God regards our affliction not as something strange to the palette, but as a cup he has drunk to the dregs. By giving up his own Son, God entered into our pain. He knows what it's like to suffer loss. But he also did more. By putting his Son to grief, God turned grief on its head. "But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5). This brings us to the final point.

7. Heaven works backwards.

C. S. Lewis writes in The Great Divorce, "They say of some temporal suffering, 'No future bliss can make up for it,' not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory."

Lewis is not being novel here. He is simply restating what Christians have hoped in for centuries, the promise that gives all our suffering purpose: "For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).

http://www.desiringgod.org/blog/posts/seven-things-the-bible-says-about-evil

Johnathon Bowers is Instructor of Theology and Christian Worldview at Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, MN. 

More short Poems

On a Hilltop stood
                              In a downcast mood
Wherein a minute before
                              I had thrown my love down.
Must move sweetly on 
                                 To walk another path
Where I can take up a love
                                  Which will love me back.

                                                                              A candid calm
                                                                            Came like a storm
                                                                                   On me fell
                                                                            As I worshiped my Lord

Oh Lord I've sinned
I've tainted my skin
Not loved my Kin
                       Spend time drinking gin.
                                                                                    What now can I say
                                                                                                  I lie here sad
                                                                                                Either I have your Love
                                                                                                           Or let me die

                                                                       She spoke loud
                                                                 She irritated my heart
                                                                    Because she said
                                                                  I like you a lot


K.Oni

Rene and Poet 12

Poet: Oh you caught me wandering again, you caught me musings in the midst of the early sunshine where I do dream so happily of my beloved. Oh Rene you are ever so sly that you creep up on me in my happiest hours.  I was in a very friendly atmosphere of a lively vivacity which her presence created. I was lost in wonder and awe amidst Eden where both of us did lie and play. Angels attended immediately to our desires providing heavenly nourishment of the godliest taste. Then you came and interrupted my joy, but your fragrance awakened me for it smelt like that aroma which were balm on the body of Christ. 


Oh Rene let me not fear a fear lest it comes upon me. I do not have the art of concealing from you my most intimate thoughts and dispositions but this fear I dread not fall upon me. I would happily die with this love in my heart and rest in peace if I could only enter that garden for which my heart longs. To rest upon those soft nourishing green pastures and play as a child.  


Rene: My light, Few men have been blessed with worthier and better friends than it has been my portion to be blessed with you. You are to me better than the choicest wine and your company I desire, for in it I lack nothing. 


Both boys then began to converse about their ambitions and what they hope to be.


K.Oni