Black Jesus

Recently I was taking a bike ride in the Northern State of Adamawa, Nigeria, when another bike carrying a footballer rode past us, I could not help but notice what was printed on his jersey, “Black Jesus”, I thought to myself, “Black Jesus, cool name”, I imagined his friends call him “BJ” when he probably scores a goal. Arguably, the inspiration for that name probably came from the fact that he admires Jesus Christ.

I wondered to myself, does he really know Jesus, does he know what He did and is still doing?

He (the young player) calls himself Black Jesus, let’s remove the black shall we, we’ll be left with Jesus, and that’s who I want to really talk about, not because the young man is insignificant, no, but I don’t think he fully understands what Jesus did.

Jesus lived a life of sacrifice, His whole life on earth was all sacrifice, He left the comfort of His Father’s side, the beauty and splendor of His Father’s presence, let go of His equality with Him; He had servants that tended to Him, angels who sang gloriously to Him on a daily basis and took a human form, why? A form that He Himself had made from the dust of the earth, a form that He Himself breathed into to make alive, He who is God became man, why? Conceived by a lowly woman, He could have been conceived by a queen or some rich lady, but no, He chose Mary for mother and Joseph for father, why?

He could have been birthed at a clean hospital with highly skilled medical personnel taking care of both mother and child, no; a manger was the place of His birth, with hay everywhere, why?

With one wave of His hand He could have dealt with Herod, instead He fled with His human parents to another land, why?

I can go on and on and on without an end, with just one question eventually, “Why?”

I was in Him when He did all that, it was in my stead He did them, the sufferings, the persecutions, the insults He received, the stripes He bore, the crown of thorns He wore, the dying of a shameful death on the cross, the glorious show He put up in hell dealing with the devil and his cohorts, and then the resurrection, He did it all for me, On the records it’s me who did it, how? Because I’m born again, surnamed after Christ, so I wouldn't call myself Black Jesus, I’d rather call myself Edwards Jesus, son of the most high God.

Accepting what He did and in turn confessing Him as Lord of your life is what it means to be born again.

Now I have been called (so have you if you’re born again) to live the kind of life He lived not for anyone this time but for Him alone.

One man who forever remains indelible in our hearts, one man who continually amazes men both saved and unsaved, till date no one can fathom the reason why He did what He did, to make an excuse for the reason, we say “Love”, hmmm, How deep is this love, how wide, how high is it? Can you tell? For God so love…., for God commended His Love…., love, can it be explained?

One man…

Stereotype: A single mindset

I’m a writer, what I do is to paint pictures with words; I love to write and read. So I'll write this.

I began reading at the age of 4 or so I was told, I started out reading any American and/or British book I could find, my mum though not a teacher by profession, guided me, I didn’t think I could write as a matter of fact I never thought of writing, I just loved reading. I began writing when I was about 10 I think, and I started with writing play lets in Pidgin, I wrote plays like “Life and Death”, “The creation” and the “Fall of Man” all in pidgin, I wrote some others too. They were quite fascinating and funny. I wrote plays and slowly I started writing poems, I realized that my poems were aimed at changing the opinions, thoughts or ideologies of a particular sect concerning a particular subject. However, growing up, it was very easy to form a belief system about a particular gender, tribe, race, or even a person. The truth was that I may not even have had any idea or fore knowledge about that tribe, race or person, I formed my beliefs from what I had read or heard. When I began writing my novel “The Innocent thief”, it was a little difficult to place the characters properly, because all I had ever written aside the play lets in Pidgin, had foreign characters, why? Because all I had read had foreign characters and if people where to read it then it must have foreign characters besides how will the foreigners relate with the story if it had Nigerian characters? I didn’t want to write a book hoping Nigerians would read it because I had this belief that the average African man doesn’t read, I had read somewhere that “if you wish to keep a secret from a black man, write it as a book” because he wouldn’t read it, so here I was thinking to myself as a growing child, Africans don’t read, but I am African, and I read. What this means is that what we read or hear has a great influence on the way we think, especially as children.

Recently I went to fix an IT problem for a foreign couple, and we got talking, the woman stood as if she was in shock, her husband asked her if she was okay, she said she was and then she asked me where I grew up and were I went to school, I told her I grew up in Nigeria (Abuja and a village in Bayelsa), I went to school in Niger Delta University, Bayelsa state, and then she asked where I learnt to speak English that good? Obviously while coming to Nigeria she already had this belief that Nigeria’s educational system was poor as result will produce very poor specimen for graduates, another wrong belief system. There’s no denying that there are a lot of Nigerian graduates who can’t speak English or even make a complete sentence in English, but this is not true for every Nigerian graduate.

I was on the internet a few years ago when I got a request from someone I didn’t know to be added to my contacts on an instant messenger I use, I accepted the request and we began chatting getting to know ourselves, and then he asked ASL (age, sex and location), I replied 24, Male, Abuja, almost immediately he said he was sorry for sending me the request, I asked why he was apologizing as I did not see any wrong in what he has done, he said he wants to remove me from his contacts list, he didn’t know I was Nigerian, I asked him what he had against Nigerians, he said “they are all scam artists”, “dear God!”, I exclaimed. I tried to convince him that wasn’t true; as we were chatting I realized two of his friends had been scammed by Nigerians, to him that was enough to adjudge all Nigerians to be scam artists, and there was nothing I could say or do to change that belief, again another wrong belief.

I was speaking to a lady the other day, we were just discussing on several issues when she said “all men are the same”, I asked her to explain, she couldn’t, I asked her what help her form that impression about men, then she began to narrate several gory stories about how men had mistreated her friends, how they all behaved in the same way, I asked her are you married, she said yes, I asked has he ever mistreated you, she said no, I went on to ask about her parents, and what she revealed points to one fact, she made her deductions from what she had heard, besides how would she even know that all men are the same, did she try all men?  Yet another wrong belief system.

Nigerians are believed to be fraudsters, a people who would do anything dubious to make ends meet, everywhere I go I’m surrounded by men and women, even boys and girls who complain about the government not doing this or providing that, yet they survive, they survive in spite of the harsh economic conditions, they smile and laugh regardless of the governments insufficiency.

In the world today a lot of people have different opinions about certain things that are wrong, opinions that were formed from experiences, books or tales, even I, I am guilty of this.

If only I had grown up reading books written by Africans maybe using African characters for my novel wouldn’t have been a difficult thing, maybe if the American couples I fixed something for had met a Nigerian like me before coming to Nigeria, they would have believed that there are Nigerians who excel in the face of educational challenges, maybe if the young man I was chatting with had met me before his friends were scammed he would have thought differently about Nigerians.

I am not biased about my judgment, there a lot of scammers in Nigeria, a lot of bad men, etc. However, it isn’t enough to adjudge any gender or race or tribe. We are individuals with different personalities, embracing and accepting these individualities helps us relate as we should.

Nigeria is but a nation I chose to use as I am her son; mindsets are formed not only by foreigners of Nigeria, but of other nations as well.

Black Gold

Do you still kill; do you still steal people and demand for money?

Do you still claim it is your own, your inheritance?

It's going, its drying up,

Our "gold" is almost gone,

What we killed for is now making us poor.

A woman with so much wealth lives her life daily

In lack, penury and pains, what an irony!

She cries,

did she think it will last forever, its drying up,

she has hope yet she doesn't know it yet.

She forgets she didn't live on it yesteryear.

For her challenges began when she chose to live another woman's dream.

Her maker set her apart for greatness, she chose another path,

a path that seemed right to her.

Hear me, return to your husband,

thy Maker, seek help,

open your eyes to see that scattered all around you are sources of wealth.

take your focus off your so called "black gold"

there is green gold too, dig for it, mine for it and you will find it gushing non - stop.

The Fallen Mighty

How high was the pedestal from where thou fell
How great was the push
O mighty one
Why hast thou not risen yet
Why dost thou remain seated in thy shame
You had beaten your chest,
you had made boast of
how terrible and fierce you are in war,
like the wind, you said,
you have blown fear across the land,
yet you fell, arise my lord
arise from thy disgrace.
Have you been so abased
Dost thou not hear the maidens mock thee.
Canst you see the children pluck at your locks
In your arrogance, you have been tutored
Pride and greatness are enemies with no hope of ever coming together.
He who must be mighty must serve in humility.
The mighty who is a servant never falls.

El's Secret

The secret plan that was
once hidden from the eyes of men
that they should not behold it
and hidden from their mind and imaginations
that they should not have thought of it and
from their ears that they should not hear it
has now been revealed
God's master plan for the salvation of man,
birthed as Jesus the Christ.
Even the devil with all his claims of wisdom,
foolishly carried out the plan of God by crucifying Jesus,
not knowing he was placing himself in total and eternal damnation
Oh how he cried, "I wish I knew that the death of Christ will liberate my captives
I wouldn't have crucified Him"
The Law holds that, for the will of man to be valid he must first be dead else his will
is invalid. Jesus died for His will to come to pass, for Satan, he can't die, so his will can't be valid.

My thoughts exactly

Many of us have mums and dads, yet many others don't have mums or dad and most don't have any and we wonder how we'll manage alone, how we'll grow, then I discovered that somehow, someway we grow, we not just survive, but we live and then I realized that if and when we are searching for who we are, all we need do is to look to the one who has raised us, not physically now, but the spiritual and we'll find, who we really.

Innocent thief (Fragments 3)

'He's gone, baby, our little boy is gone'. Suddenly she screamed, "I saw her", "saw who?" He asked, "I saw her but I didn't know, I didn't have the strength, Nooooo!" Her husband thought she was going through pains, so he tried to comfort her, but "I saw her", she kept saying.
'Get her some food, Mr. Johnson, she needs to eat.' He rushed out, just then he heard a child cry, he turned and ran in that direction, 'my child' he cried as he ran, he stopped to see a child nursing at its mothers breast, then he began to cry again. He walked out of the clinic daydreaming, 'hoonnk, hooonk', a truck horned, 'get out of the way', the driver screamed but it was too late, he had ran him down. in deep thought, he walked into the busy road without caution, 'is he alive?'

Thoughts in Words II

As though in a movie, two men with guns chasing me every where wanting to cut short my life, they tried to catch me, but I hid myself, then they ran past my hideout and I got hold of the leader and threw him out of the balcony, he smashed his head on the floor of the parking lot, a woman rushed to the scene, she turned and caught a glimpse of my face, quickly she called the police and they got hold of me, (Nigerian police, they would not hear what I had to say, I mean, I had no witness, it was my word against the woman's, I mean she saw me throw the man, but she didn't know it was in self defense,) I had committed murder but I couldn't admit it, is this how it feels to...

Thoughts in Words

In the thick darkness of night, as all were sleeping, he felt something move, he opened his eyes but couldn't see a thing, then he noticed he hadn't closed the door properly, so he got up to close the door, as he pushed the door, the refused to be shut, he looked down to find something obstructing it, he opened the door to remove the obstacle, then, just then, something or someone came in, but he didn't know, he finally removed the obstacle and shut the door tight......

Innocent thief (Fragments 2)

Mr. Johnson's son was only two hours old when he was taken from his mother's side in their poor little farm house. His father, Johnson who had just delivered his wife of the child returned cheerfully to his farm to get his farm tools, when he heard his wife scream. He rushed back to the house to find his wife lying in a pool of blood, his son gone. He fell on his knees, mouth open, hands on his head, tears flowing freely from his eyes. He had to push himself to take his unconscious wife to the little village clinic some two kilometers from their house in Amassoma, Bayelsa State.
'Who could have done this?' He quizzed himself, while his wife, a petite chocolate skinned woman, lay helpless on the small rusty bed provided for her in the clinic. She seemed to have regained consciousness, but not her senses as she kept screaming, 'my boy! My child! Where is he?' She screamed. Johnson rushed to his wife to calm her, she grabbed his shirt and pulled on his thick hair, 'give me my son!' she screamed, she was hysterical. A nurse ran in with a syringe containing sedative and injected her, before long she was asleep with tears flowing freely from her eyes. 'What do I tell her? We didn't even get a chance to name him, Nanowei!' He cried.

'Breast feed that child woman', a man in front shouted; the baby was crying seriously, she tried cuddling the child to get him to keep quiet but he wouldn't be quiet it was as though the child knew she wasn't his mother that he had been stolen, in anger she smacked the child, in shock the child was quiet for about a second or two and then burst out in tears.....

The Truth 'bout Joseph

When you look at the story of Joseph, one would be tempted to believe that he went through all he went through in the hands of his brothers and Potiphar’s wife for his sake. I have heard many make reference to this story when they do; they just talk about his promotion from the pit to the palace.

We have to realize that all he went through was simply God sending him ahead of his family, God who saw the end from the beginning, planned for his family, He knew that at a certain time there will a great famine such that would felt all around. He gave Joseph the interpretation to Pharaoh’s dream and a wise counsel to Pharaoh, do you think God didn’t know what would happen when Joseph did those things (gave the interpretation and wise counsel)? It was all part of the plan from the beginning, the dreams Joseph had when he was yet with his parents, to working in Potiphar’s house to when he interpreted the prisoners’ dreams and then pharaoh and then became the Prime Minister of Egypt.

Innocent thief (Fragments)

Amid the clatters, the dancing, the clinking of wine glasses, the drinking and all that, he was seated quietly in a spot of solitude, getting inspired, thinking out his next plan, his next strategy, putting his thoughts together, with his hand holding his jaw, he did all this.

When he notices his quietness is becoming too obvious, he rises, gets a glass of red wine, gulps it down, and headed out to the dance with a stranger. lost in the fun, he forgot the time, he finally stole a glance at his wrist watch only to discover that it was way past scheduled time, 'I guess I'm left with the other plan', he thought as he without warning rushed out of the party to his drawing room, for it was time to put his thoughts in lines and dimensions.

His thoughts were scrambled, he couldn't put them together, he was hurt, but couldn't tell why, he was unhappy, 'today is ruined again', he managed to say, he had a load in his heart, but he couldn't tell what it was, being a loner that he was, there was no one he could talk to about it save his books. he fell on his knees and cried, cried out of pains from a heart he didn't have. Lost his heart to solitude and lonesomeness, inside he was a sweet guy who lives a lie.

A Salute to her

Raise your caps in salute to the pride of nations, to Eddies pride, stand at attention, for the honor of kings passes by, pay obeisance and do it quickly, for the most beautiful woman on earth's planet is here, bring the tributes and lay them before her feet for she is the heroine of my land.

I'm honored my queen by your presence in my life, I'm proud of myself cos you love me, I bow in greeting to you.