The Revelation of Women

            I hope this one goes to blow your mind. Well, it did to me and all who heard it that day. Ohh! It was just this Saturday that has gone by, at a Christian fellowship, I attend sometimes in the mornings on Saturdays with my mum. Although she’s more regular there than I am, not that I’m proud of it but I sure do learn loads anytime I go there. Well let’s skip the fundamentals and get on to the real facts. For point of information you might want to take your Bible along with me on this, because you surely will wonder why you didn’t see this all this time. Second point of information, if you are a man just like I am don’t get jealous…:) There’s more to women than meets the eye. Let’s get on the road.

           Since we are going to start something extra-ordinary here, let’s take the first book of the Bible, Genesis. That’s where we first get to meet woman. Do you know that woman was the last thing God created on the six day? Check your facts well, the Bible created Adam (the man) and after that he caused man to sleep then woman was made out of man’s rib, right? Good! Hold that thought, we’ll come back to it. Did you also notice that with every day that God created, he looked at it and said it was good? Sure you know that. Don’t lose focus yet! Refer to Genesis 2:18, you there? If the Bible is yours and there’s no mistake in it, sure there isn’t! You would be reading this or similar to it, “And the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him’” Did you see that? So when you turn to the same chapter verses 21 and 22, we see that God made woman, right? Now here’s the first revelation, in the beginning when God made woman; He said she would be man’s helper, correct? Good! Now we in this world have mistaken that word to mean labourer, which is wrong!!! Take that from the beginning, woman wasn’t washing man’s clothes because man didn’t have any. Woman wasn’t cooking for man because there was all the food in the garden already made. Now don’t get me wrong, men. I’m not saying a woman shouldn’t cook, or wash, or tidy up or clean. Don’t treat woman like she’s a labourer and you marry her to serve you. Man! You’d better woken up already; that wasn’t God’s original plan, and we’re here to correct it. Notice in our scripture above that, God said he was going to make man a helper comparable to him, not in service or bondage to him. If grammar means anything, there’s a huge difference between the words.

                Wait a while for the second revelation. Notice again in this same scripture in the verses 18 that before woman was made, God said it is not good… now turn to Chapter 1:31. By this time God had finished creating woman, note she was the last to be created. Notice what happened, after the woman was created. “Then God saw everything that He had made and indeed it was very good…” People! Did you notice that before woman came, it was not good, but after woman was created, God looked at everything and said indeed it was not only good but very good? Woman therefore became the perfection of creation.

               Now this stage we are going to get to, only the tough minds can understand this, I pray yours is… I know many times men have always tried to get back at women when it came to the issue of why the woman had to allow herself to get tricked into eating the fruit. Right? Well here goes something not nothing. You know we made a point that woman was actually the perfection of creation, remember? Yeah! So let me put the sentence in correct grammar. The devil tempted the woman and not the man because, of the perfection and the very good nature of what the creation of woman added to the world. If the devil managed to destroy the woman then he would have reversed the order. And that’s what he did until salvation came from Christ. You notice in every culture from the foundation of the world, the woman has been suppressed and made so low. Why? The devil doesn’t want women to perform and experience the perfection in which God made them; and the more poor the society the worse the women are treated. Sure you have realized that when there’s a woman leader anywhere there’s a great change, and you know the funny but interesting thing, “men know it and since long ago, they have tried to resist the woman.” King Solomon, the wisest man ever with all his wisdom claimed that behind every successful man is a woman, why? They are the needed drive. Whoooooooosh, you think for a second that it is a woman writing this script, I’m sure I’m a man and proud of it but the truth has to be said. If you won’t say it, I will. I’m sure you will like to pass this message on to your spouse, your girlfriend, your future wife, your mother, and all other people who know and are willingly to accept the truth.

Preached by Zipporah Koranteng

Retold by Edwin Bonney

 

Lessons from the food

               I just finished eating and pounding some local Ghanaian dish, ‘fufu’. Actually I ate the food a few days back. I started this script with the first line and I had to abandon it. Well, sorry but I’m now having the time to write this. As if you do care. Don’t try to act all emotional with me. Okay fine! You want me to say it right? You are really going to make me say this? Well, off the record, if you didn’t care you won’t be here reading this. Did someone ever tell you that you never did care? Aaaah! Don’t let it bother you; they don’t know you well enough! Okay! Ok! Ok! Let’s go back to the well reason for writing this.

               For those foreigners to this food, I will give you a brief description of the way the food is. Fufu is a local dish of Ghana, my country. (Hmmmm I was somehow surprised when I went over to Cote D’Ivoire last year, the food was also eaten by them. Maybe it is a West African, but that’s not the point here I want to draw. Stick with me on this on again, keep your eyes on the letters and not the imagination of the food itself.

                  Well ‘fufu’ is made from boiled plantain and cassava, or boiled yam and cocoyam or boiled plantain and cocoyam. It can be mixed with any other two substances in the same category. Note that, usually the first listed mixture is the more popular. Hope you get the drift. Good!  For the purpose of our discussion (is this even a discussion? It’s me talking here. Surely it becomes I discussion if you comment) and what I ate that day I’m going to go with the more popular; plantain and cassava. After the cassava and plantain is boiled, it’s pounded. That’s where the main work is!

                  Process: The little cooked and cut plantain pieces are pounded in a wooden mortar (well maybe I could show you a picture one day) and the device use to do the pounding is called the pistil ( a long wooden stick which comes soft and flat at the end…I hope I can use you a picture too). So in case of the ‘fufu’ I ate we pounded the plantain first and then after the cassava. After that too we pounded both together to make the food soft and smooth. A delicacy which is eaten with soup; that day I ate with light soup. Yum-yum! Okay! What did I tell you; concentrate on the letters, not the food!

                    Now to the main reason I brought this thing up. You know there are two people that prepare this food. One does the pounding, usually the man, and the woman does the turning of the mixtures in the mortar whiles the pounding is going on. If you have seen this being done, you could get scared if you don’t know how the woman turning or stirring the mixture is able to dodge the heavy pistil that is driven into the mortar. All you could say then was probably that the woman is good, but it is rather an art.

                       I started pounding ‘fufu’ since I was 12. Trust me when I tell you that even now I get tired when pounding but experience over the years has made things easier a bit. You pound, you sweat, and you get tired. I recall an uncle of mine saying one day that he has stopped eating his favourite dish, ‘fufu’ because he doesn’t know why you have to get so tired when preparing it. All through since 12 I thought and I realized that the way the man gets tired in pounding , I’m so sure…in fact I know that he uses up all his energy and only gets the same percentage or less of the same energy replaces, never more! Maybe you could be deceived to think that the satisfaction from eating the delicacy gives so you so much more energy. Many people, who think they have eaten so much, end up sleeping right after eating. Bad habit! And energy wasted!

                          Lessons: I have already told you I started when I was 12. If you ever begin pounding ‘fufu’ you would discover bruises in your palm, at the ends of your fingers, but then you still continue, why? Surely because I know I’m going to eat something sweet at the end of your tiring work. Point of note I never finished pounding. How could you think I could? At 12 years I didn’t have the strength to continue moving the pistil up and down, up and down, boi! my dad had to finish it off. What I learned at that young age? In whatever trial and mountain in life, you are bound to get hurt at the beginning. You never get it easy at the beginning unless of course you never start. The Bible says it best; the latter is greater than the former. The man pounding, you remember is sweating, perspiring whiles hungry. You still have the same lesson of persevering through difficult times. The hungry man pounding his heart out on the food knows what he’s going to get at the end of his work. Who said, “He that shouldn’t work, shouldn’t eat?” I guess the Bible was right. In the long run it makes me think about another life value here; you have to have a goal. You have to set a target! Chances are if you don’t set your target and goal, your ‘fufu’ is not going to be pounded and that success you so much want in life will not be achieved. You know what the goal does to you? Just like the man who is pounding ‘fufu’ it motivates you to go on.

                    The last lesson I will touch on will be on trust. I told you that if you see the way the woman turns the mixture I our mortar, you will be scared, because of the way she manages to swerve the on-coming the pistil, and she does that steadily till she ends, not getting injured. That’s the virtue I learnt watching and pounding the fufu being made. You realize that if there’s no communication and trust between the woman and man the food will never will be made. I will leave that to you to make you own deduction.

Wow! All that from making a dish! No! Not just any dish, my favorite dish!

 

That’s God- He happened!

Have you ever had mind blowing moments in your life, where you could not explain how a particular thing happened and why? I’m sure you have. Let me break certain things down. Allow me to proceed from our own universe; look at the entire universe, where we called space. I read a newsletter from actsweb.com and in the script, the writer made a reference to a book he had read by a scientist Lambert Dolphin Jr, “The Search for the Ultimate”. In his words, “Confronted every day with the mysteries of space and the atom, I continue to be amazed at the complexity and order of our universe. From the sub-microscopic realm of the atom to the expanding reaches of the galaxies, our universe runs like intricate and well-oiled clockwork according to great physical laws which never change or falter.”

Why I’m I bringing this in, you see we live in a world in a small part we call Earth, which is embedded in other beautiful creations. Looking at everything, the sun, the moon, the stars, other planets; I realize that everything is in order. I recognized that there’s a master creator behind all this. I can’t imagine that all things came into being by itself, I mean how? Come down here to our own earth; we discover man (you and I) putting up state of the art buildings, manufacturing cars and many others; even with not so perfect man, things are a bit in order:) and imagine a whole world that is in order; that you wake up every morning, and the sun rises normally, you are still breathing, your house is not floating (then I come to think of gravity) . Everything moves in order, planned and someone gets up and thinks that he arrived here by some BIG BANG! So, so so….excuse me to say that’s very silly.

Yesterday for instance a friend shared with me something that really made me realize that we just don’t live by ourselves. She had been expecting something for five years. In her own words, “five good years, Edwin I have been waiting,” it was just yesterday, apparently just five minutes before I called her, and she was lost for words…you call that coincidence, no I call that God! You think the single mum that is thinking about how to feed her children and suddenly one cousin or aunt turns up at her door one day and says, “I have been looking for you for years now, finally I have found you…take these things and take care of yourself.” You think that is coincidence, no! That’s God! Take the young girl for instance who is very good in school but her parents do not have to money to further her education, so she has to stop school and then out of nowhere she earns that scholarship; you think that’s good luck. No! That’s God!

Look at your life even, you haven’t fallen sick, even if you did you miraculously become healed, the doctor didn’t find any trace of that disease. Actually he is surprised because the tests revealed that you were never sick and he lost for words…you think that happened by chance. Once again, no! That’s God! You have always been praying to God for something for a while now, maybe something little, like a phone, then one day your dad who told you he couldn’t buy you the phone you wanted comes home one day and hands it to you. You think dad has now got the money, my dear, no! God happened! Those things that happen in our life that we can’t explain, but we know it couldn’t have been by chance, actually nothing happens by chance, there’s a reason behind every thing, behind every person, every creature. The fact that you haven’t found the reason doesn’t mean it is useless. Imagine a boy that applied to go to the university, and with this university, the particular course he wants to do has so many other applicants running after it. When he gets that admission letter with his desired course you call that a coincidence, No! I don’t I think so. God happened. Think for instance about those that didn’t get that course, but ended up doing something else and they excel so much in it. They now even realize that they had a talent and skill in the course or job they did not even consider. You think that it was by chance he didn’t get what he wanted or maybe then God did not answer his prayer. God did answer his prayer, but the details changed. That’s not coincidence.

Everywhere you find yourself, every place you are, every thing that happens around you is not by luck. Look for that deeper meaning; you will realize that “something” was behind it. Sometimes certain things happen that we can’t explain; “why she didn’t come when she promised?” “Why was I late to work?” (I’m not saying, go late to work but when you are, look for that deeper meaning, maybe you may not find it, but probably few hours early that day you would not have been living), “why did my son fail the test?” “Why wasn’t I taken for the job, I thought I did well on the interview?” “Why has it taken all the while?” Yet still, God happened, that’s the simple explanation.

I will end by a simple story of myself; it was when I was in grade 6. Normally I used to wait for my parents to finish dressing and they drop me off at a certain point and then I continue on foot to school. Well, this particular morning, that was the same thing going to be done, but after I finish taking in breakfast, my parents were almost done dressing up but I went and told them, “today I’m not going with you, I want to walk to school.” My school was a fifteen minute walk. I loved to walk and I still do. My mother was surprised because I rarely walked to school in the mornings and besides they were almost done. She even tried to convince me to wait a little but she couldn’t hold me back. Guess what? I came back later home from school only to be told that my parents were involved in a car accident! Yea! And what was more surprising was that it happened just near where I would have got down continuing on foot. The other car slammed into the side of the car where I usually sat, and mind you, I never changed sitting places in the car, always the same seat. “My parents?” Actually, nothing happened to them, they left the car and went on to work, safe and sound. Yes, guess what I was thinking; imagine if I went to school that day with them? The rest is for you to decide…. You think that was coincidence, certainly not! That is God! Ask me what happened, why I didn’t feel like going with them that day, I will tell you, “God happened!” Why? Because quite frankly, I don’t understand what went on. I know this scripture in the Bible that could sum it all up. Ephesians 2:9 which says, “But as it is written: Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those that love Him.” That’s the answer, you just can’t understand it. God Himself says those things cannot even be imagined with our human eyes.

Someone once wrote in a book that there’s some space in man that only God can fill. Though we don’t see it, deep inside each and every one of us we know there’s a divine God around us, who oversees all. Look at the atheist; he even knows there’s a God that’s why he spends all his time trying to disprove that fact. My pal, if you don’t get it, that’s God!