For the love of God! Can we just love?

It's Friday, the weekend. The day to unwind, relax, wash off the stresses of your week with a long shower and raise your glasses and cheer in the weekend. It goes by so quickly.

And today, was just for friends - just me, having long conversations with friends. I am happy for being blessed with good friends. It is God's way of taking care of me. For we all need a Lazarus. A friend we love that if we lose them, we would just..well...weep. Jesus wept. Jesus understood the value of a good friend. It's what makes him a friend to many.

It was a day just to abandon my plans, and just listen, laugh and love. The greatest of these is love...! Some that are old enough might just burst out in song - 'what the world needs now is love sweet love, it's the only thing that there's just too little of '.

The world seems to be at a turning point, a tipping point even, it's the 2nd Friday in a row that there was some kind of hostage crisis, and people lost their lives for no apparent reason; and we all have to wonder...what's the matter with the world?

Are our ideals so far apart that we seize to just..love?

Are our views so different that we seize to...love?

Are our clothes so different that we seize to....love?

Are past mistakes of one time oppressors so great that hate has overthrown ....love?

And we die on cold hard concrete with blood, red blood, making a halo around our heads....

God forbid!

Life as we know it is changing, and the world is becoming a scarier place but I feel calm, for I know to Look Up and not out into the abyss that has become this world. 

So, on a Friday night, I had long conversations, with friends and we spoke about just life....just life, for it is what we have and what we must use to spread the gospel of love that is Christ Jesus. For such a time as this!

1 John 4 :4 Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is within the world. 5 They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. 6 We are of God: he that knoweth God, heareth us; he that is not of God, heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error. 

7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is God; and everyone that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 



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That Friday when death came to all our doors...and we all cried

And someone close to my family has died. I heard the news, late today, and I cried for a minute. Then I stopped. I was too angry to cry...

Angry at death for giving no warning. Angry that death doesn't care about any of our plans. Angry at death because for the most part, we never get to say goodbye.

The last time we spoke, cheeks were still rosy, eyes were wide open with expectations and hope was abound. Perfection wasn't abound, but it was pretty close. Now death came and laughed and there is just a feeling of gloom that has sucked all the air out of my lungs.

I had a planned post, but death impacts us in such a way that all our earthly plans just go awry. I couldn't face the family. I don't have the words.

Then I turned the radio on and heard about the Paris Attacks................... and when you know that numbers don't lie and you are looking at a figure of 153 - dead - my heart just feels heavy and my body weighed down and my spirit broken for a world  perpetually mourning.

Death in the midst of life feels like a worm in your reddest, juiciest apple. When you step into the store and make your way to the fruit aisle, and see the myriad to choose from, then your eyes take you to that perfect apple, blemish free and shiny. You allow yourself to imagine how sweet that apple will be. You take it home, you wash it, and you are momentarily in euphoria. Then you bite. There is the worm- you spit it out, the apple falls. You feel disappointed, the next apple you pick will not be trusted, for a while, you will probably cut it with a knife. Worms in apples - no good.

Death- the only certainty of life. When people close to you die, you think of your own mortality; it's naturally normal. It makes me repeat what Jamaicans often say when people die "What is man ?"

Ecclesiastes 12:7 " then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return to God who gave it."

I just feel sad. We all want to go to heaven but no one wants to die. I don't want worms in my fruits, I don't want deaths in my midst.

But...I know better. I know all the things you are supposed to think and say.

"Death, where is thy sting? Grave, where is thy victory?" But when people die - it just leaves a void. It just leaves an emptiness that even words from the Bible seem hard to swallow; like a wormy apple.

Living without hope, a hope for a life free from people that blow up market places, planes, buildings or shoot people for their own twisted reasons, seems so much worse. So I cling to a God that hasn't lied yet! He says that he has gone to prepare a place for All of us; and he's coming back he said; coming back for us.

We must live ready! 

I can't write anything else...I've got nothing!

All lives matter to the God who created all life

When you make a plan to write on Wednesdays and Fridays, and you are staring on a blank canvas, and watching the sand run out on Wednesday, you wonder. Was my plan to write on these two days His plans or mine?

I usually write when something impacts me or I get something resonating deep within. Something so demanding that if I don't let it out, it would consume me. 

Today.....I had no such conviction. Zilch. Nada...nothing!

Then, today, I learn that I have an event to attend at my daughter's school on..you guessed it..Friday night - another night I said I would write. I thought - well isn't this nice.  

So what's a girl to do? 

John 2:5 His mother saith unto the servants, Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.

It's the hardest thing to obey the simplest things that God asks us to do but if He asks you to do it , it is for your good. The best wine was saved for the last, who does that the master of ceremonies asked the groom. Nobody but my Lord, for His ways are not my ways and if He says write when you have nothing to write about, write anyways and see what happens! I'm preparing you for greater - for the latter rain!

So from 2 days to 19 babies. 19 babies have died in Jamaica recently from a bacterial infection that has been dubbed the 'Dead Babies Scandal'. You can read more about it here. It has become a huge talking point, a political football of  nine day wonder proportion. Nine day wonder is a saying which means you talk about something for a while, then you forget about it soon after. But in an almost election year, this 'scandal' has taken on a life of its own. I usually don't write about controversial issues, but I heard something today that got me thinking.

The babies that died were preemies and the Minister of Health has referred to them as 'not babies- in the real sense' and my head started spinning. 

They are not babies, in the real sense.............sounds a lot like ............. foetuses aren't babies either.

It's funny how in this world, we value things on an hierarchical system, but what makes a life a life? What makes a life more real than another? What makes a foetus a baby? A human being? Is it birth?

So if a live baby is what's worthy, does it's weight matter?  Does the fact that it has under developed lungs puts it lower on the hierarchy? Apparently it does.

Apparently it does, and this is why a human being, once a foetus, could be comfortable enough in their skin to buy body parts of aborted babies, you know those babies that weren't 'real' enough for birth.

I feel like we treat old people the same way we treat babies and foetuses, like they have no voice, no rights, because maybe they have little to contribute in a world that doesn't value to frailty or sanctity of life. A life knitted in a womb by a masterful craftsman.

God values all life. God is life...He is the breath of every human life...in the real sense.

Funny thing as I wrote about hierarchy, a revelation came to me. At bible study, we discussed how we as people view persons' sins in the very same way. We have some sins on a higher level of the totem pole, others lower because they are not deemed as that 'important'. They are small, dare I say 'premature?'

To be  honest, I rate sins...the pastor said I shouldn't. I didn't get it. All sin is SIN but the consequences are greater he said. I knew it in theory but ...I didn't get it, until now. Just now...writing these words on a canvas that was blank.

People, babies, preemies, foetuses, don't have an hierarchy - they are all God's creations and we all started out the same way. A sperm meeting an egg, a seed was planted. And that is as real as it gets. 

Sin too my friends has no hierarchy..it has no order of importance and it started with a seed. A seed of deception. Galatians 6, which we are studying at bible study asks us to restore our brothers who are overtaken in sin with gentleness, lest you also be tempted. I want not to condemn our goodly Minister of Health in his pronouncements - just to say- all lives are real, equal and precious in the sight of God.

 If God said it, I will believe it..where He leads, He guides, He provides provision - There was a post in me after all, and it's still Wednesday...in my neck of the woods!

All lives matter to God, do you feel the same way? Join the conversation, let me know your views. 

Related readings : Galatians 6; John 2, 1-10.

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