Rwanda – the genocide, personal stories
My friend Patrick is on a trip to Rwanda, he sent back email reports of his trip and he graciously authorised me to post portions of them while changing the names of the people involved. This is Patrick’s account.
‘Yesterday was my first church service here and what a difference it was too. The majority of the members are survivors and orphans of the Genocide. The singing was absolutely amazing and a blessing. You could truly tell the grace of God was there.
Then came the testimonies.
What the leadership has found over the years is that testimonies have a variety of benefits.
- First, to give glory to God and thank Him for what He has done in saving and healing people.
- Secondly, the public testimony helps further remove the poison and damage in the testifier’s life.
- Finally it means that new people coming to the church who have been very damaged can see that there are people like them who have been through hell, this gives them hope for their own solace and builds up trust so they can start to open up.
Mama Jo and the young woman
One of the elders, Mama Jo was encouraging and exhorting us all to worship and praise God with all that we’ve got. Mama Jo was widowed during the Genocide and lost eight of her children during this period.
Mama Jo gave an account of how a young woman exhorted one of the churches to praise God with all they’ve got and there is something wrong if they can’t or won’t. The young woman concerned was happy and grateful to praise God by lifting up her fingerless hands to him.
During the Genocide she was a house girl when the mobs came to kill the Tutsi family she worked for. She fled with one of the babies and she being Hutu thought she’d be safe. Unfortunately the killers counted the victims in the house and concluded that one of the babies had been stolen away for safety. They found the girl and baby. They murdered the baby and then punished the girl by chopping her fingers off.
Another young woman Read more
Book: How Would Jesus Vote?
In the emotionally charged atmosphere of the 2008 American presidential election, ‘How Would Jesus Vote’ is a book that takes on the issues head on. Dr Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe offer, not so much a choice between ideologies, a choice between political parties, or a choice between candidates, rather an assessment of the hot button issues of our time and their own perspective of what the Bible would teach us about these.
While each reader will have their own perspective on what the authors have to say and the conclusions arrived at, yet one must recognise in this book a genuine and noteworthy effort to bring Christians out of the nebulous world of irrational party loyalty to a genuine biblical understanding of what should motivate their vote. Indeed many believers vote for persons whose worldview radically differs from theirs, no questions asked, and this election is no exception.
The coverage is impressive – health care, immigration, the judiciary, abortion, stem cell research, the death penalty, education, the economy, marriage, war, the environment, etc. That the, oh so thorny issue of global poverty is left out is a pity, and the overall treatment of immigration is to me unsatisfactory. Overall the conclusions are not surprising, but the analysis is worth the read.
Finally, the authors make a strong case for believers to get involved in the culture, the political process and not bow to liberal intimidation. This is definitely a welcome tome, may it get into the hands of curious believers.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400074061 Read more
A silent blog and a seething mind
I have been silent for one week, not that i have not spoken, i just have not written anything. My mind though has been seething with ideas, thoughts and plans. I wish i could do what i do with computers, transfer them to a disc drive for later usage.
I have cogitated on everything from the parable of the sower to the naïve near-universal adulation of Barack Obama, to racial politics in the church, all manner of sundry items have inhabited or passed through my mind, unrecorded and possibly not to be recalled.
But i have been too busy to write. I took to writing again as a way to liberate my mind of clutter; constantly mulled over and unexpressed thought cannot be good for mind health.
Then it became addictive, yet not therapeutic. It is still work. I am often asked how i find time to interprete, pastor and write, the answer is i don’t; which explains the occasional silence, not a sign of diminished contemplation, but of diminished availability.
So if you have been combing the blog for new bits in the past week, now you know. I can only hope that you dived into the archives to dig out the gems within, of which there are plenty. One of the outcomes of my cogitation is that i shall henceforth highlight some of my photographic travel documentation, aka photos. I photograph the banal, the bland and the unusual.
From Christchurch, New Zealand, and i commiserate :
no junk nail
Donnie McClurkin – great is your mercy towards me
I could not resist posting this, i have been singing this song for days, and i guess someone out there will be touched by it. Enjoy.
urban legends – the psychology of junk
This is an email i received, it had been forwarded to dozens of people before me, mostly Bible believing evangelical Christians who kept sending it on. An interesting opportunity to probe the psychology of junk.
Note the implicit threat for those who do not send it on. To think the reformation occurred several centuries ago and was supposed to do away with this talismanic, fear induced religiosity. It does raise a number of questions. If you are one of the senders, tell me :
- when you send this, do you really believe that this image has secret powers and that unless you send it on you will die, or that some other misfortune will befall you ?
- is it that you are not too sure, you just don’t want to have to find out?
- or it’s just easier to send it than to think about it, you prefer to shift the responsibility to someone else?
For once I replied the email, as follows : Read more
Book review : The Shape of Mercy (Susan Meissner)
Book: The Shape of Mercy
Susan Meissner hands us a beautiful portrait of a young woman who through her interaction with two other women, one dead for four hundred years, the other in the sunset years of life, wakes up to who she really is and what are the things that matter in life. Her private world is shaken as she delves into the journals of Mercy Hayworth a woman who at her age, only four centuries past was convicted in the infamous Salem Witch Trials even as she proclaimed her innocence.
A fascinating glimpse into an infamous period in history, a story of love, sacrifice, regret and ultimately peace. Susan Meissner tells her story well and draws you into it. You won’t put it down until the last page is turned.
AUTHOR
pastor bola olivia ogedengbe,
The Theophilus Company,
ABBA HOUSE, Paris,
see profile-
