URGENT MESSAGE TO THE CHURCH
Dear Humanity,
Send an urgent message to the
holy ones. Talk to your more godly neighbours; tell them things they’ve failed
to learn; hold their hands and show them the way to the way. Not the way to
eternity, dear humanity, for they know that already, but the uncommon way to
common sense. You know them. You know those holy ones who wear special attires
on special days to special places, but act and talk like you and me on ordinary
days, you know those to whom every global blessing or disaster is the handwork
of invisible super-powers. You know them, for they like to bind and loose, and
love to speak about beasts and marks and signs of the end.
I know them too. They are with me
and I am in their midst. I bear their name and they bear mine. We bear many
names: Christians, believers, lovers of God, lights of the world; but we
were never really any of these. Never.
Just months ago, before things fell apart, we
were already apart, self-loving and self-seeking, disunited and astray, like
sheep without a shepherd. Our eyes were never on the heaven above nor on the
earth below, but on our daily bread and butter. What business had we with the
state of the nation or our city, or even our little neighborhood? We interceded
all-day long for ourselves, for our families, and for our uncountable loved
ones. We set traps all night-long for witches and wizards and fashioned special
weapons for wicked aunts and uncles. We wallowed all year-long in endless rhemas
and banters. And fought holy wars with words and ungodly gestures. Tithe or no
tithe; grace or works; skirt or trouser. We kept fighting. We had factions and
sects, and kept breaking into countless pieces. We sprung up everywhere and
littered our cities with bill-boards and stickers. We fasted for thirty one days for rice and
stew, and forgot about the darkness in our midst. We sought breakthroughs and
the expansion of our holy places, and paid no attention to the wickedness in
the east or the growing ungodliness in the West. We sought not the lost, but to
fill vacant seats in our decorated domes.
The virus has come and our mansions have
fallen. They tell us to sit at home. They tell us to cut short our numberless
lifeless meetings and bring to a halt our innumerable predictable gatherings.
They ask us to return to our source, to sit still and rethink our bearings, to
retreat and assess all our long Christian days. And what do we do? We mourn and
curse and punch the air and surrender to thoughtless theories. We beg God to
end this madness and return us to our vomits.
Dear humanity, I beg of you,
tell your holy ones to use this time wisely while it lasts; urge them to learn
all the lesson there is to learn while they still have the book. Tell the
younger ones to pay more attention to their God than to their phones, tell them
that there may never be a time like this for the rest of eternity, and remind
them, please, that all things still work
together for good.
Still your brother.
Udeme Ralph
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