Features
Hosannah: The triumphal entry
The week before Jesus rose triumphantly from the tomb, He left the comforts of Bethany and went to Jerusalem. Along the way, Jesus sent two of His disciples to get a colt that had not been ridden before, not a stately steed but a donkey, ready and willing to serve his master. Upon this humble animal the King of Kings rode.
A crowd of believers gathered to give Jesus a royal welcome. As He descended the Mount of Olives and entered Jerusalem, they laid clothes on the ground and waved branches of palm trees. They called out, “Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.” His followers rejoiced with such loud voices that some Pharisees asked if He couldn’t quiet them. Jesus answered, “If these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.” He was heralded as King of Heaven and Earth before offering His perfect life. He would bring victory over death, sin, and suffering. His was the greatest of all conquests. Although some passed by, preoccupied or skeptical, and gave Him no regard, those who had “eyes to see” saw their Saviour that day. They welcomed their King. And He received their praise. Humbly, ever so humbly, He accepted their devotion and fulfilled ancient prophecy.
The next day, Jesus cursed a fig tree for its hypocrisy. Its leaves, so healthy and vibrant, belied the fact that it bore no fruit. Unlike the fig tree, Jesus was everything He said He was. No hypocrisy was in Him. He Himself said, “I am the true vine.”
As our Lord entered into Jerusalem amid waving palm branches and shouts of adulation. He made His triumphant entrance riding upon a colt over the carefully placed clothing of believers. In His honour the great multitude cried, “Hosanna: Blessed is the King of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.” With celebrating crowds and pleas for deliverance, the Lord was surrounded by devoted followers who looked to Him for rescue and salvation. But He was the only one who knew of the loneliness ahead; He alone understood that some of those who stood with Him one day could reject Him the next. Just days later, His mortal life would end on the solitary, cruel cross of Calvary.
Sometimes, when all is well and friends abound, the tide can turn, people change, and, it seems, in an instant we’re alone. Once we revelled in the support of friends; now we feel abandoned. We look around for those who will stay with us through thick and thin. Many among us have felt the shallowness of the crowd, the fickleness of fans. The athlete who is cheered on one play, is booed the next; the actor who wins the critics’ acclaim for one role is vilified for the next. At times it may seem that no one can be counted on for long.
Fortunately, most of us know true loyalty because we’ve experienced it. If not, we can sow seeds of loyalty. We can be more trustworthy and reliable, welcoming these virtues into our lives. Loyalty and all its associated qualities are to be cherished and nurtured: We can be faithful to family, friends, and others in good and not-so-good times. We can be steadfast in our devotion to truth. We can be fair and treat people mercifully. In word and deed, we can be loyal not only to those who are present but also to those who are absent.
Jerusalem stirred with passion that Sunday before the Passover. Travellers had clustered there bringing sacrificial lambs. Coins clattered in coffers where pigeons were sold and in the temple yard, merchants were busy earning silver off the celebration. But above the hubbub hung a question, “Would the prophet from Galilee come?” “What think ye, that he will not come to the feast?” they asked one another.
Even as they wondered, Jesus Christ’s apostles had fetched Him a young donkey for His entry into the city. It was to be His last, and so He paused for a moment at the Mount of Olives, looking across at the golden city, and He wept—not for Himself, though He knew His death was imminent, but for Jerusalem, a city whose walls and children would be ground into the earth. Then He proceeded.
Word spread ahead that He was coming and as He did, the babble of voices united into an uproar of adulation. “Hosanna, to the Son of David,” they cried. “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord.” Even before He made it to the gates of the city, crowds were thronging the way, waving palm fronds and myrtle, spreading their garments in His path.
They were giving Him a Messianic welcome. For this moment, at least, they were His people, and He was their king. He came not with armies, but riding a gentle animal, and they believed they adored Him.
Where was this crowd just five days later when Jesus hobbled to Golgotha, bent under a cross? History does not tell us. Their shouts had been carried away on the wind, their palm fronds withered, and so Christ went alone to be crucified.
As we contemplate a lonely Saviour on a hillside cross, we may feel critical of this crowd whose love was so brief, but it should teach us something deeper. It is the human tendency for even the most righteous enthusiasm to wane. We are inspired, see with clarity and then the fog rushes in. We seek to proclaim our love of the Lord and then circumstances teach us forgetfulness. We mean to amend our character, and then the urgency leaves. We shout for the Lord one day and turn our backs the next. When we hope that we would have been one to rush out and carry His cross, we need to examine whether even now our shouts swell and ebb on a fickle wind.
He alone could descend below all and bring life and salvation to those who would humbly seek it. The Lord taught: “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.”He invites us to come unto Him, to taste the sweetness of forgiveness and “gather fruit unto life eternal.” His promises are sure, His peace everlasting.
Far from the pulsating, indecisive crowd is One who slumbers not nor sleeps as He watches over us. His love is perfect, His fidelity unsurpassed. Quietly, and with unwavering loyalty, we can let Him in.
By Samuel Enos Eghan
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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