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Go your way and tell John
A movie I watched on TV drew my attention to some realities of life so I decided to put on my social commentator’s cap for this article. A lot of things happen in life which baffles the minds of the average person and some can be very demoralising and also life-changing.
If such things happen to you and you are a Christian, the chances are that, you may begin to wonder the authenticity of God’s Word. One of such experiences happened in the land of Israel, in the life of John the Baptist, as recorded in the Bible according to Luke 7:22.
A little over a month ago, a close relation was admitted to the emergency ward of the Korle-bu teaching hospital. I was to pay for some services so I had to go out and withdraw some money from a mobile money vendor.
On my way back to the ward, I heard screams of a woman coming out of the entrance to the emergency centre. She was being restrained by a couple of men but was inconsolable and she was shouting “who will take care of the children”.
Apparently, she had just lost the husband and was a scene of sadness that is etched in my memory and will forever be with me. I believe, given that the majority of people in the country were Christians, that lady can be assumed to be a Christian, and would be wondering why God has allowed such a thing to happen to her.
People go through a lot of mishaps that shake their belief in God. How do you convince that woman whose Level 300 son, an only child, who got drowned when he went to the beach to swim with his colleagues in the sea at Cape Coast, of the goodness of God?
How can you say God is good to that woman who got all her stock of bags of beans and rice representing her whole capital that got burnt in a fire outbreak in one of the markets in Accra recently?
People in such moments of despair wonder if they have believed a lie so far as the Bible is concerned. This was one such situation in which John the Baptist found himself and sent messengers to Jesus.
Jesus assured him by saying “Go your way and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached”.
Whenever you find yourself in a hopeless situation that everything around is screaming, ‘your end has come’, remember Jesus’ reassuring words to John The Baptist “Go….. tell John…” gather courage and say to yourself, “I don’t know how, but I am trusting God to make things right.”
Whether you are confronted by a life threatening disease, you have just lost your job, you have lost your husband who is the family’s bread winner, you do not know how you are going to pay for your children’s fees at the university, or whatever the challenge may be, remember that everything that has a beginning, has also an end with the exception being God, His son Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, what appears unresolvable today, that appears so huge, so monstrous that your mind tells you that this is it, the end of your world, you look back a couple of days or weeks later to realise that, you are more than a conqueror and has been able to overcome it.
Never allow your fear to overcome you, such that; evil thoughts to harm yourself, overcome your rational mental capacity to destroy your life and those who depend on you. As a human being, there will always be one challenge or the other from time to time.
Some of them can really be frightening and can really tax your resolve but there is always a solution to these challenges. In these times of haircuts affecting our finances, which we do not know whether it is Punk or Tokyo Joe or Sweat, times are really hard for the average person.
Sometimes as human beings, we need to do a bit of comparison and we will then realise that we are better off than others, no matter our situation. It may be night today, but hold on, daylight shall surely come tomorrow so please do not harm yourself. God bless.
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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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BY ROBERT EKOW GRIMMOND-THOMPSON
