Nowadays, every new Christmas season is unlike the last, and economically and socially more unfriendly, if not more brutal. It always appears as though everything is tumbling downhill. Foodstuff is scarce, and its prices are not only very high but outrageously beyond the roof. It would appear famine is looming. Transport fares are so high many people cannot afford bus or taxi rides. Medical bills are beyond reach. Who can afford new clothes? Many parents will owe school fees next year, and there may be higher education drop-outs.
Many average Nigerians are spitting fire, but they are looking in the wrong directions for the causes of their bewildering fate. Was it not in this season last year that everyone was hopeful that 2023 will be a better year than 2022? Was 2022 not prayerfully expected to be better than 2021 and 2021 better than 2020? Hasn’t that been the ritual since I was born about 74 years ago? Have Christians not always gone to church every December 31, abusing and cursing the outgoing year as the cause of their woes and hopefully beseeching the coming year for Eldorados? Why has it not occured to many people that neither a present year nor an incoming one is any serious factor in the human environment? Why is it not known that it is man who forms his environment, good or ill, and that the environment cannot form or to deform him? If man feels deformed by his environment, is it not that he formed deformity into the environment and he retroactively harvests the fruits of the seeds he sowed? Even new borns are not innocent humans and are born into the environment they deserve to be born into. Remember the statement: “I knew thee before I formed thee in thy mother’s womb”. This is telling us that our existence did not begin with our birth on earth this time around!
These principles and events which relate Effects with Causes in the eternal Law of Sowing and Reaping are no longer easy for man to understand because he is no longer a simple being. In reality, man’s aches and pains are not a falling apart, but interconnected opportunities for re-awakening and upbuilding homeward to paradise. The Christmas season offers a wonderful opportunity to inwardly disengage from all material distractions and properly focus on matters of the spirit. Afterall, the Lord Jesus, Whose Birth on earth and Divine Mission to the earth that we are being reminded of, taught that we “seek first the Kingdom of Heaven and all other things would be added unto you”. Unfortunately for many christians, over indulgence in revelry in this season deprives them of the opportunity to look upwards and to discover that they, and not anyone else, are responsible for whatever befalls them in the economy and in the social environment.
Man is no longer a simple being. He has made his earth life so complex that he cannot anymore easily understand himself and the world in which he exists. Answers to questions remain unsatisfactorily unanswered regarding who he is, from where he came to this earth, what he is here for, wither he goes when he leaves the earth and what lies on the paths of his journey to that destination. To awaken him from this slumber so he can disentangle and free himself from self imprisonment in his ways and means and ideas, man is on a mounting scale lovingly provided those economic and social obstacle he often sees as undeserved troubles. The priests appear to have forgotten about The Law of Sowing And Reaping and deceive him with invocations of the Power of the Almighty Creator to arbitrarily rescue him from all the self inflicted troubles which menace him.
Recepients of this desecration of the Name of The Almighty Creator are too inwardly dull and spiritually asleep, if not dead, to recognise that the Almighty Creator is not an arbitrary ruler of the Universe and no creature can obtain what is undeserved. Although the Creator envinces LOVE, He is also PURITY, LOVE and JUSTICE. How many priests today boldly tell the congregants that they are the causes of their sorrows and are the ones who must resolve them? The so-called prayers said at religious gatherings, like the lyrics of the songs, paint the picture of an Almighty Creator who is no more than an errand boy of humanity. They asked Him to follow them to their offices everyday so that the enemy will not smite them, and to accompany them back home for the same reason. They order Him to burn their enemies to Ash with “holy ghost fire”. They do not ask themselves why they had to have enemies and if they, too, are not seen as enemies by other christians. Are enemies not the fruits of seeds once sown?. These Christians do not remind themselves that the Lord Jesus taught them that a man cannot reap scorpions where he sowed butterflies. Nevertheless, the priests massaged their egos for the money they can get for the peurile invocations. Despirited, many christians sing the song Nearer my God to Thee but the meaning makes no imprint on their souls.The import is that it is man, the creature, who must seek and move nearer his God, and not the other way round. Nearer My God to Thee simply means I will unconditionally fufil Your Will. That was the message in the mission of the Lord Jesus to the earth. However, the content and the meaning of this will are still beyond the comprehension of many christians.
A few days ago, I overheard one of my friends sing the song of Jacob…nearer my God to thee. I teased him that he could add the song of Philip Paul Bliss…IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL. Some christians believe these songs are for funerals. I consider them all- timers, particularly for this season in which many of us are like living- dead persons or walking corpses. I, too, feel the material, psychic and spiritual heat of this season. I merrily laughed at myself in the afternoon of December 17, 2023 as I was writing this column. What heat, what pressure would have so come over me that I would not have remembered the importance of this date. I had many things in my head to clear up. It was like I was living many lives in one earth life. Chief Adeyemi Lawson, spiritual leader of adherence of THE GRAIL MESSAGE in his days, once said many human beings would live many earth lives in one when the great Comet moves nearer the earth. In this season last year, I wrote the column… CHRISTMAS, THE RADIANT STAR AND THE GREAT COMET. There are many scriptural prophecies and scientific observations about THE GREAT COMET which is heading earthwards in a straight line from the orign of THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM, also known as THE RADIANT STAR. For human beings who know of it, THE FESTIVAL OF THE RADIANT STAR will be celebrated on 28, 29 and 30 December 2023, a constant period on the Gregorian December calendar every year. The Great Comet is expected to energise all events on earth in velocity, quantum and impact towards spiritual purification of the earth for the judgement and the millenium, giving to each creature in the remainder of the earth life mountain folds of the harvest of fruits from diverse seeds sown several earth lives ago. That is why many of us now appear to be chewing more than we think we have bitten, attacking the government, our neighbours and village people for our diverse karma.
Early on December 17, 2023, I made two routine calls to my wife. By mid afternoon, she, too, called back two times. I was still struggling with this column when she called a third time to ask if I did not remember December 17, 2023 was our 40th wedding anniversary! It had never happened in all 39 anniversary dates before now that I failed to write her a romantic letter delivered on the dot of 12 midnight before the dawn of an anniversary date. Both of us hung on the phone, laughing at each other. She, too, to whom it should matter more, had lost herself in work. We just hung on the phone, laughing. It was clear to us that we were running at full steam, like every struggling Nigerian, screaming against ever stronger economic and social currents to beat the tides.
The songs: Nearer My God to Thee and It is Well with my soul are appropriate for this season when almost everyone is running helter skelter for material and spiritual survival. To these songs, I often reassure myself when the going goes tougher that… When the Need is Greatest, God’s Help is Nearest to me. I still do struggle, as my faith teaches me, to always open myself to high guidance in everything I think, say or do. This is the heart of WATCH AND PRAY in Christianity. We must watch the thought, the speech and the action to align them all with…THE WILL OF GOD which we promise in THE LORD’S PRAYER WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. We must align them with the WILL before we let them go forth from us because they are seeds we are planting and because the sowing is prayer, not all the haggling we do in a church chamber. NEARER MY GOD TO THEE was written in one week in 1841 by Sarah Flower Adams when her pastor requested a hymn for an urgent sermon he was to deliver based on Genesis 28: 11-19. This was the story of a runaway Jacob who, aided by his mother Rebecca, tricked his blind father to endow him with valedictory blessings meant for his elder brother Esau. Fearful of reprisal from an Esau expected to be angry, Jacob fled to the land of his maternal grandparents. Jacob developed the thoughts from which Sarah Flower Adams wrote nearer my God to thee. He spent one night in a deprived environment where a stone made up for his soft pillow. He had a dream in which a ladder connected the earth to heaven. Promises of this dream may have made Jacob penitent and decide to be nearer to his creator.
I learnt something interesting in the Jacob story which led to the writing of the song nearer my God to thee and, in my view, connects his experiences to the ones many of us are undergoing without really realising that they are self inflicted troubles. In the time in which we stand, we are given a simplified new law which can help us overcome all the complex problems which imprison and torment our lives today. Jacob cheated his elder twin brother Esau. What may be evidence of his penitence may be the message he left for us in the promise: nearer my God to thee. No debts goes unpaid we are always told. In the land of the forebears of his mother, Jacob overpaid with seven years of his life for the wife of his dream. He slaved faithfully and effectively over 20 years in hardwork for his uncle and father in law Leban who literally stole seven years of his life.
Today, many of us consider our years wasted on many grounds. We cheat in almost anything we do, and we are bound to be fulsomely cheated in return. The Yorubas say when one person hosts a nation to a feast, he is hardly impactful. However, if the whole nation cooks for him, he may die from over feeding. That is to say we may be smothered in the harvest of the evil we perpetuate everyday. The penitence of Jacob will have shielded him from other barrages of returning karma. In summary, we simplified new law for the approaching Millenium permits that we enjoy everything in this wonderful creation provided we do not hurt or injure our fellow human beings in the pursuit and achievements of our desires. This is a very serious law, which requires carefulness in everything we do if we are to not collide with it, stumble and fall or crash. Remember it: no one must be hurt in whatever we do! Jacob encouraged his mother to be unfaithful to her husband by deceiving him. They were bonded in sin against his father and against his brother. Jacob deceived his helpless father in collaboration with his mother and cheated his brother. We have no evidence of his relationships outside his family to determine if this was his basic nature. Do we not often behave like him? Who does not fulsomely cheat? The list is endless… housegirls, shop girls, farm hands, civil servants, husbands and wives, teachers, business persons, mechanics and drivers, elected public officials, bricklayers and other masons, home, office or factory security guards, generals, lawyers and judges, corporate office workers, pastors and general overseers, traders etc.
To achieve our desires, we breached trust and easily renege on agreements. We steal, we kill, we covet, damage the reputation of other people or destroy anything not in our favour irrespective of the hurt it causes other persons. When an armada of the fruits ripening for harvest rush on us, we beseech the pastor to invoke the power of the Almighty Creator to remove the irksome cup from us. This overflowing cups are the obstacles or experiences we require to knock us hither and tither for awakening from deep slumber.
You must wonder why I link returning home to Paradise to 2023 CHRISTMAS in which millions of christians are lamenting that they have not had enough food to eat for months, to care for their health, or clear piling rents or buy rice, turkey, chicken or new clothes, or travel home for reunion with loved ones. We would be unable to answer these questions or understand what is happening to us if we do not ask , and understand, the question…WHAT IS CHRISTMAS? Many of us have been celebrating Christmas in the belief that we know what we are doing, and that may be why we are angry or bitter that we do not have enough money in our pockets at this time. I have an understanding of Christmas different from that of the merry go round Christian. Do not get me wrong. We may rejoice inwardly and outwardly in the knowledge of a reminder that THE LOVE OF GOD visited us on earth in a rescue mission as perdition approached. What we make of the reminder of that Mission is what I am after. Is it revelry imparting, dining, wining and dancing?
Withdrawal
On the day before Christmas, on Christmas day and on the day after, I strive to withdraw inwardly from all bread and butter activities to examine myself for evidence that the Mission of the Lord Jesus to the earth has transformed, or is transforming, me into that being that He would like me to become. In other words,how do I stand in relation with the birth and mission of Jesus? In other words, HOW DO I STAND IN RELATION TO THE BIRTH AND THE MISSION OF JESUS? Does this have to do with how much rice or chicken and turkey on Christmas day? Rather, I may spend some time in joint worship with a congregation which shares this notion about christmas. Rarely will I be found where there is no such introspection, where all that is to Christmas is an opportunity to dine, wine and dance to let off steam, if stress from the hurly burly of daily existence. I also like to be in places where people are dissatisfied with prevailing opinions about everything and seeking to deepen their understanding of those ideas, so that they can emerge from Christmas as persons who are richly inwardly renewed in deeper life christianity. With the expression deeper life Christianity, I do not refer to Deeper Life Church but to the possibility of every Christian during Christmas becoming inwardly renewed to afterwards live deeper, clarified christian lives. It may very well be the intent of that church, as it may of several others with inspiring names, which beckon the spirit of man to an earthly existence filled largely with THE BREAD OF HEAVEN. What I mean is christianly existence which is freed from age old institutional dogmas which have distorted the pure teachings of the Lord Jesus.
These dogmas were conceived by the church elders of old from their limited understanding of various concepts in the days when humanity was in its spiritual infancy. The Lord Jesus promised us that our knowledge of existence and of LIFE would expand at a future date. Could that future date not be this era? Has our knowledge really expanded? This Christmas season, I like to examine some of those areas of Christian Life with grave knowledge deficits. One of them is… prayer.
