Features
A need for more lights
• Light up people’s lives
Sometimes we might look at events going on in the world, or in our own lives and see darkness. It may even seem like the darkness is bound to get worse in the days ahead.
Even though this feels like a modern problem, it isn’t. Darkness has always been a problem in this world, and light has always been the answer.
Centuries ago, the Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans, “Now it is high time to awake out of sleep. … The night is far spent,” he went on to say. “The day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness and let us put on the armour of light” (Romans 13:11–12).
That sounds like perfect counsel for our day. Distress about the present too often leads to a kind of sleepy apathy about the future. What we need is a wake-up call to open our eyes to the goodness around us. Then we can put on the light like a suit of armor, preparing us to push through darkness with hope for better days ahead.
The truth is, light shines more brilliantly, more hopefully, against the backdrop of dark times. For example, this global pandemic, with all of its sadness and heartache, has allowed humanity’s greatness to stand out in inspiring ways. Scientists have worked around the clock to deliver vaccines in record time. Health care professionals, teachers, and so many others have selflessly served their communities. Neighbors have helped each other as never before.
Many families have noticed that they are closer today than when the pandemic started. They cherish relationships more, they value memories shared with loved ones, and they look for ways to extend love and caring to others. While they’ve done more physical distancing, in some ways they’ve been more emotionally connected.
Maybe it’s time, as the ancient prophet Isaiah said, “awake, awake, and put on strength” (Isaiah 51:9). We will certainly need strength in the future as we have in the past, the strength that comes from looking for the good and holding on to faith, from treating people with compassion and respect, from putting on “the armour of light.” protected by such light, we can know that even when all is dark around us, all is well with our soul.
The most significant and beauti ful moments in life so often come just after periods of darkness and sorrow. The birth of a new child is always preceded by a mother’s pain and travail. The joyful colors of spring are most inspiring because they come on the heels of a dreary winter. And glorious sunrises would be meaningless if they didn’t follow the darkness of night.
Perhaps there’s a message for us in such patterns: Nothing is ever hopeless. When things seem the bleakest, when all seems dark and despairing, it may be that a great light of hope is just about to shine forth. After all, such new light cannot come if life is always sunny.
In many ways, the story of Handel’s Messiah exemplifies the light of hope. While the music and lyrics abound with hopeful messages, Messiah was written during a dark and dismal time in Handel’s life. He was in debt and out of favor as a composer; public taste for his work was dwindling, and he struggled with crippling self-doubt as a result.
But then a friend, Charles Jennens, gave him a text he had prepared, with hopes that Handel would set it to music. Taken from scripture, it included lines like these:
“Lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid.”
“Arise, shine, for thy light is come.”
And “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; and they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined.”
The result was one of the most popular and enduring pieces of music ever created. Combining his talent with hard work and divine inspiration, Handel composed his masterwork in just 23 days. Heaven clearly smiled upon his effort, and the person and the moment came together in a powerful way.
The work itself and its miraculous creation remind us that the “great light” of hope shines for all, but in particular for those who “walked in darkness” (Isaiah 9:2). Even when everything seems bleak and hopeless, new life will come; light will always chase away darkness. That is the abiding truth and message of the Messiah.
By Samuel Enos Eghan
Email: samueleghan@gmail.com
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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A path towards healing
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BY ROBERT EKOW GRIMMOND-THOMPSON
