I’m running out of time
And I’m feeling kind of worried.
Then I’m like,
“Hey me, stop worrying!”
And somehow
I worry
That I’m worrying,
Because I know that worrying won’t help me.
But I’m worrying,
And that is bad,
Because I have always been told
To stop worrying.
Oh, but now I can’t stop worrying
Because you told me to stop worrying
And now I can’t stop worrying
About the fact I am worrying.

Everyone is scared of Death.
I'm petrified of Death.
But am I scared to die?
No,
no, I am not. I welcome the end with open arms.

At night I shudder under my blanket
dreaming of the paths that Death leaves
in its wake.
In the darkness of my room with thunderstorms inside my head,
I fear the hole that is left
after Death has struck.
I wonder what,
who, might come out of it:
Depression, Mourning, Sorrow, Confusion, Emptiness,
and even more Death.

I miss the good old days
when Life could be as easy as
going to bed at night worrying
about what Pokemon version to get,
how to get the latest game console,
what skill in basketball I need to improve in,
when my parents will find out I had an infraction,
how the test next day will go.

But it's funny, Life,
the more you grow in it
the more you approach Death.

As the redeemed of Jesus Christ, if we are ever to find true refreshment in our desert wanderings, it will be as we choose to dwell in God’s presence and in the newness of His daily mercies through faith. Our trials tend to force us, like pushy but invaluable friends, to learn hands-on what it is to live in the grace of the moment.

We live in the grace of the moment by continually recognizing both the immense need and the immense blessing of each moment (by developing a conscious and habitual attitude that says, “I am so desperately needy AND I am so abundantly blessed.”) and by relying on the Holy Spirit to teach us exactly how to reconcile the two. This happens as we first learn to live in the reality of the eternal, for it's an ever-present awareness of eternity that liberates us to receive every present moment with thankfulness and live it to the fullest, without setting up false expectations for it or worrying about the next.

When we are convinced that our life is hidden with Christ and He alone is the Prize, that this world is not our home and we are simply on assignment here, and that our pain and failures are only temporary but, with His redemption, the beauty and wisdom to be gained from them are eternal, we are set free from living in the regret of yesterday or in the fear of tomorrow. We can instead live in the blessing of the right now which fully meets the need of the right now because both need and blessing are gifts from the Father to get us ready for eternity and to meet our Bridegroom face to face. We have need of nothing but Him and His grace, and His fullness dwells in us.

The life lived in the grace of the moment is the life absolutely surrendered to the reality of God’s wisdom, God’s character and God’s sovereignty over it, for in entrusting ourselves to those, we acknowledge that He has a set and planned purpose for our lives, that it is good, and that He is powerful enough to carry it to completion. His wisdom assures us that He has always had in mind, down to the smallest details, exactly what He is doing with us; His character, that His heart is ever faithful toward us; and His sovereignty, that His directing arm cannot be shaken or thwarted. They reveal to us explicitly that He loves us with all of His mind and heart and strength, and in that knowledge we find perfect rest. As beloved children we know that we will be taken care of without having to know how it will happen or what it will look like.

In our helplessness we can simply look up to Him, reach out for Him and cry to Him in humility and thanksgiving, for our God cannot resist eyes and arms and hearts doing that. He always picks up and holds close to Himself those who long for Him. We may think that what we most desire are answers and perfectly successful plans and reasonable control over our lives, but what our souls crave is comfort and intimacy and love, and we can have those the instant we fully surrender to His embrace. He may sometimes hide His face from our “Why?”s but never from our “Hold me!” cries.

If we mistakenly suppose this life to be about this life, we will miss the present grace for fretting over and fighting for all the blessings we don’t have or fearing that those we do will be lost, until we find that they have become an unbearable millstone around our necks. If we pin our hope on anything in this temporary world it will be no stronger than that—a mere pin, easily pulled out and easily broken when life weighs too heavily upon it.

Enduring hope can only be based on God’s absolute promises given to us in His Word, not on our own expectations or wishes or impressions of how things ought to be. Enduring hope lets go of everything that can be lost to take hold of everything that cannot, and in doing so is actually able to squeeze the sweetest nectar out of those released and perishable blessings so that even their losses, though painful, do not leave a bitter aftertaste. For it’s often in the loss of a thing that its worth to us becomes most precious, and by letting it go with grace we can best savor its purest delights.

Realizing that the pain runs so deep only because the beauty ran so deep and that without it having once touched us we wouldn’t now know the emptiness of its loss, our grief will eventually turn to thankfulness that it ever touched us at all, and we will be left awed by the mystery of its haunting. There's a peculiar kind of beauty that can only be experienced with the innate knowledge that the moment is fleeting, and the most intense beauty can only be seen in the presence of both light and shadows.

The ability to enjoy our tangible blessings is surely heightened by the conviction that they are not ours to possess, by the acceptance that their loss is inevitable, and by the understanding that they were never meant to satisfy. For the enjoyment, then, will be absent the tainting dread, the taking for granted, and the twisted expectations which so easily and often mar our earthly pleasures. We will relish what we’ve been given today but recognize it may very well be gone tomorrow, and even in that uncertainty we will find a contented peace, for in every loss there lurks a hidden blessing, and all that really matters can never be lost to us. It is just as important to be a good steward of our losses as it is of our more obvious blessings, for the beauty that comes from nobly and graciously accepting loss far exceeds any tangible beauty that can be taken.

Knowing that we belong to another time and place and that this one is only meant to lead us there, like the charming towns one passes through on the way to a better destination, we will take in the sights with wonder and delight but keep traveling on toward our true home. For these sights, though tantalizing, are like mere slivers of light from a crack under the door compared to the glory to be found in God’s Presence. But when received as personal gifts of His grace, they become to us a stage precisely and delicately set by a Lover to attract the attention of His beloved, to show off His greatness and show forth His beauty to win her heart, and our hearts indeed are won.

To live in the grace of the moment is to keep looking to Jesus—to Jesus’ feet to lay our burdens down, to Jesus’ arms to be held securely, to Jesus’ hands to receive all we need, and to Jesus’ face to know our only sure hope and hearts’ true desire.


#Lord Jesus, merciful and all-sufficient One, in every need, small or great, tangible or intangible, give me the discernment to discover Your extravagant gifts of grace, the wisdom to receive them, the eagerness to open them and the passion to cherish them well. Give me eyes to see and a heart to fully enjoy with gratitude each blessing You have prepared for me today, for this very moment, and may I thrill to Your every advance of love.#

I saw a path and ran ahead
I nearly lost my way
Your mercy caught me by the arm
To Your side You bid me stay

I put my hope in my own plans
Which soon around me fell
You stopped me short upon that road
And said, "Rest and all will be well."

I'd surrendered all, but to my foe
Enticed into the briars
You turned his evil schemes instead
Into refining fires

I couldn't see my helplessness
Until my legs were broken
Till Shepherd's hands caressed my wounds
And healing words were spoken

You picked me up and carried me
And made me feel Your favorite
You held my head against Your chest
Until I grew to savor it

You tended me with gentlest touch
Then soothed all thought of fears
You sang forgiveness over me
And washed away my tears

There is no one like You, Lord
On whom I can rely
In loss, in danger or attack
You hear this poor sheep's cry

It's You Who keeps me from real harm
Who watches my coming and going
You shield me with Your strong right hand
From darts the enemy keeps throwing

You said to all who trust in You
You would give perfect peace
Enough for mind and heart to rest
To let all worrying cease

So, Lord, I trust You with my life
Your Shepherd's heart is pure
Your purpose for me's guarded well
And Your deliverance is sure

Please teach this sheep, Lord, how to wait
And strengthen me to stand
To put my hope in Your desires
And to love Your sovereign plan

You lead me into fields so green
Where streams of life are flowing
Where healing winds blow oft' and strong
And choicest fruits are growing

You set me free to hear Your voice
To follow at Your call
And even through the dark, cold nights
I'll know You've arranged it all

Yes, storms will come with battering rains
With hail and gusts and thunder
But these are meant to beckon me
To Your wings to pull me under

For it's in the darkness of the storm
My grip's most apt to tighten
And when my heart beats next to Yours
All earthly burdens lighten

You cause
a break inside my organs
Pointing out my flaws
our differences.
You are at peace.
I sit jittering, worrying
what everyone will think
of when I didn’t care
you made me laugh at
everything
Changes.  You’re not right for me
Nor I for you, but I can’t help
Thinking
What if?  Then I remember
you’re not what nor
Everything I want.

You are an intellectual snob you
have a depth about you
I would love to delve in,
a psychological study
that even the best critics would praise,
but I don’t want anyone else to have been there
or ever go there.
I cannot hold on to you
tear me away while
You’re haphazardly gluing us together
We’re a kindergarten art project
messy, trying to see
Beauty within the confusion,
unfinished    

You asked me
Where am I most at peace
4 years old.      
I could be anything
No fears
I hadn’t been ripped apart.
I was the girl that said everything,
until I felt the need to screen my thoughts,
like the filter you use to make your coffee
each morning.  I wish that’s where I was,
having you tell me
that you like your women like your coffee
Dark and bitter.

I can look past your chauvinistic ways,
not giving a **** about anyone.
You’re not really closed minded
You just act like it,
which annoys the hell out of me
Sometimes.  I wish life was simple.    
But then
I would never know your complexities nor
Feel the things you help me feel,
like hate for train whistles
or the burn of gin hitting my throat.
Music      
you introduce me to
offstage trumpets, bad movies.  Your politics,
your brown eyes      
and how you can hear frequencies
that most everyone else can’t.  I worry
that you hear
the fear in my voice and heartbreak
With every word I speak.

When were you going to tell me?
Or was that your plan all along?
To throw me out
like yesterday’s coffee grounds
or cut up scraps
Used and unwanted.
I wish I could tell you
to tell her you don’t want her
but me instead,
you don’t, I don’t want you to.
I want holding hands, laughter
comfort, personality, humor, intellect.
You want that plus things
I can’t give
But you always take.

You are your coffee
disgusting, caffeinated,
addicting
the only patch that helps is
comforting words you never spoke.
We had many conversations
of your desires, lusts, mistakes,
but I was burned,
by lies, distrust.
You left, like always,
a harsh, acidic aftertaste
on my tongue.

Alexander K Opicho
(Eldoret,Kenya;aopicho@yahoo.com)
This year has had plethora of public worries in Africa over broken English among the young people and school children. It first started in the mid of the last months  in Nigeria, when the Nigerian government officials displayed public worry over the dying English and the strongly emerging slang known as pidgin English in Nigerian public offices and learning institutions. The same situation has also been encountered in Kenya, when in march 2014, Proffessor Jacob Kaimenyi, the minister of education otherwise known as cabinet secretary of education declared upsurge of broken English among high school students and university students a national disaster. However, the minister was making this announcement while speaking in broken English, with heavy mother tongue interference and insouciant execution of defective syntax redolent of a certain strong African linguistic sub-cultural disposition.
There is a more strong linguistic case of broken English in South Africa, which even crystallized into an accepted national language known as Afrikaans. But this South African case did not cause any brouhaha in the media nor attract international concern because the people who were breaking the English were Europeans of non British descend, but not Africans. Thus Afrikaans is not slang like the Kenyan sheng and the Nigerian pidgin or the Liberian krio, but instead is an acceptable European language spoken by Europeans in the diaspora. As of today, the there are books, bibles and software as well as dictionaries written in Afrikaans. This is a moot situation that Europeans have a cultural leeway to break a European language. May be this is a cultural reserve not available to African speakers of any European language. I can similarly enjoy some support from those of you who have ever gone to Germany, am sure you saw how Germans dealt with English as non serious language, treating it like a dialect. No German speaks grammatically correct English. And to my surprise they are not worried.
The point is that Africans must not and should never be worried of a dying colonialism like in this case the conventional experience of unstoppable death of British English language in Africa. Let the United Kingdom itself struggle to keep its culture relevant in the global quarters. But not African governments to worry over standard of English language. This is not cultural duty of Africa. Correct concerns would have been about the best ways and means of giving African indigenous languages universal recognition in the sense of global cultural presence. African languages like Kiswahili, Zulu, Yoruba, Mandiko, Gikuyu, Luhya, Luganda, Dholuo, Chaka and very many others deserve political support locally as well as internationally because they are vehicles that carry African culture and civilization.
I personally as an African am very shy to speak to another fellow African in English or even to any person who is not British. I find it more dignifying to speak any local language even if it is broken or if the worst comes to the worst, then I can use slang, like blend of broken English and the local language. To me this is linguistic indicators of having a decolonized mind. It is also my hypothesis that the young people who are speaking broken English in African schools and institutions are merely cultural overtures of Africans extricating themselves from imperial ploys of linguistic Darwinism.
There is no any research finding which shows that Africans cannot develop unless they speak English of grammatical standards like those of the United Kingdom and North America. If anything; letting of English to thrive as a lingua franca in Africa, will only make the western world to derive economic benefits out of this but not Africa to benefit. Let Africans cherish their culture like the way the Japanese and the Chinese have done, then other things will follow.

To live in Wales is to be conscious
At dusk of the spilled blood
That went into the making of the wild sky,
Dyeing the immaculate rivers
In all their courses.
It is to be aware,
Above the noisy tractor
And hum of the machine
Of strife in the strung woods,
Vibrant with sped arrows.
You cannot live in the present,
At least not in Wales.
There is the language for instance,
The soft consonants
Strange to the ear.
There are cries in the dark at night
As owls answer the moon,
And thick ambush of shadows,
Hushed at the fields' corners.
There is no present in Wales,
And no future;
There is only the past,
Brittle with relics,
Wind-bitten towers and castles
With sham ghosts;
Mouldering quarries and mines;
And an impotent people,
Sick with inbreeding,
Worrying the carcase of an old song. To live in Wales is to be conscious
At dusk of the spilled blood
That went into the making of the wild sky,
Dyeing the immaculate rivers
In all their courses.
It is to be aware,
Above the noisy tractor
And hum of the machine
Of strife in the strung woods,
Vibrant with sped arrows.
You cannot live in the present,
At least not in Wales.
There is the language for instance,
The soft consonants
Strange to the ear.
There are cries in the dark at night
As owls answer the moon,
And thick ambush of shadows,
Hushed at the fields' corners.
There is no present in Wales,
And no future;
There is only the past,
Brittle with relics,
Wind-bitten towers and castles
With sham ghosts;
Mouldering quarries and mines;
And an impotent people,
Sick with inbreeding,
Worrying the carcase of an old song.

I cannot,
Absolutely cannot,
Add a single moment to my life by worrying!

In fact...if I were to worry my mind to the point of stress I could perhaps subtract myself.

I could,
Absolutely could,
Subtract myself from this life by worrying!

Therefore, I musn't worry my mind.
Even if in the next moment I were subtracted life it shan't be from worrying.

Tis' better to go quietly than with a whimper.

Summer morning -
pink jets of clouds
splash out
from the golden well of the east
falling just short
of an ebbing moon.

Streams of swallows
flutter and glide
over the garden -
they are all flying
in the same direction
as if erupting

from the sun’s waking pulse.
Just for a moment
one of the birds hangs
perfectly still -
like the top-most drop of water
from a fountain before it turns

to face the glittering pool.
Beneath them all
the hummingbird
makes her rounds
and a dove scratches the earth
below the feeder

keeping an wary eye
on the scribbling intruder.
So many summer mornings -
too many summer mornings
I have wasted
worrying about the world

and my place in it –
absent from my own body
and breath
the cage of my ribs
rising, falling, and pausing
without me. Meanwhile,

another swallow
stills her wings.
Buoyed by an unseen breeze
she is both feathered sail
and cresting wave as she slices
over my shoulder bearing west.


Tom Spencer © 2015