Jesus didn’t have that luxury of time to explain the matter to the Pharisees. If anyone should have been worried, it should have been John, but John had said, “He must increase and I must decrease.” First of all, it was misinformation. Jesus wasn’t the one baptizing; it was his disciples. In life, make sure you don’t act based on rumors. If it matters, find out for yourself. If it doesn’t, don’t waste your time.
Secondly, it wasn’t a John vs Jesus matter. John and Jesus were not rivals. When Jesus heard what was being said, he left. He didn’t need to explain himself to them. He didn’t need to let it worry Him. If you follow the matters of Phariseeism, they will always give you something to be offended about, and you’ll break friendships with people you weren’t supposed to have issues with.
If it’s not a matter that matters, learn to walk away from the issue and it will die out. Don’t add any additional burden to your life. Focus, and leave the distractions to fall away. They said you’re 30 and you’re still yet to marry, so what? Who’s even more concerned about the issue in the first place; isn’t it you? People talk about issues that don’t concern them as if they care.
There are two sides of the same coin. There are people who genuinely care and bring someone’s matter up to you but if it’s not your matter, don’t bother yourself. If two people have an issue, the only time you can address the issue with the two of them is when the two invite you in. Don’t make yourself a judge over a matter that nobody invited you to.
If someone’s girlfriend invites you into a matter and you personally don’t know her boyfriend, it doesn’t concern you. From the passage, Jesus didn’t know the other brother, so He didn’t bother Himself. If two strangers are having an argument by the roadside and they invite you in, don’t explain anything. If two best friends are fighting and they invite you in, be discrete. They will get back together like they always have, and your rushed advice won’t be forgotten.
When Jesus came to earth, there were billions of problems as there is now. With many social problems, He didn’t even try to solve them or even address it. He didn’t come to judge the world, He came to save it. He solved what was man’s most important need and the underlying cause of all other problems. All others were just distractions.
Treating a girl like shit doesn’t make you a man. It makes you more of an animal.
Every girl has experienced sexual harassment in some form. It will shock you to know the number of girls you know that have been sexually abused. As a guy, you also know at least one guy who brags about taking advantage of girls. Therefore, this rape culture is not far-fetched. Don’t act like it’s happening elsewhere.
You may not be the problem but make sure you’re not part of it. Stop hyping yourself for never taking advantage of a girl against her will. If you hype what is meant to be normalized, you normalize what is meant to be discouraged. Treating a girl like a human being is normal. It’s not an achievement. It’s the bare minimum.
Don’t wait till someone rapes your relative or friend until you realize the severity of this problem. Imagine being a girl and having to be constantly taking precautions literally from birth to avoid getting raped? How about we denormalize rape? Adding insult to injury, society blames the girl for falling victim as if those who rape cannot be stopped.
If girls don’t feel comfortable around you, you’re part of the problem. If you’re always demeaning women, you’re part of the problem. You coerce girls to do things with you, you’re part of the problem. If you still hang out with friends who undermine women, you’re still part of the problem. If your first instinct is to question what the girl did or didn’t do when she fell victim, dude you’re a BIG part of the problem.
Stop treating women like they are some sex objects, a minority group or second-class citizens. And if you STILL don’t see where the problem is, you’re the worst part of the problem.
If you’re not supporting the #saynotorape movement, then it speaks volumes about you. Stop avoiding the subject. Stop running away from the real issue. It’s not about what women should do anymore. The question is, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? What you’re doing is either encouraging the culture or annihilating it.
If you still think that “real” men aren’t the problem, how about you fight side by side with women? What about that? How about you let go of those shallow-minded, unwilling-to-learn-yet-really-dumb friends you have. You have a voice. Use it!
You don’t expect a person to be oppressed and tolerant at the same time. If you always push someone to the wall, they’ll one day obviously stand their ground, no matter how “tolerant” they are. We were born free and we were born to be free. So don’t act surprised when we breakthrough. Black lives matter!
“One day, things will by all means change”. Things will change, but the question is, how long will you wait? Evolution or revolution. Well, we choose the revolution! Sometimes it’s the war that brings peace. We matter. Black lives matter!
Always remember that we are all fighting for the same values; freedom, justice, equality. The only differences are our definitions of it.
So in our fights, let’s not fight against people. People are not our enemies. Let’s fight against the concepts of misconceptions. Concepts outlive people. People come and go but the system is still living on.
But let’s not forget; the systems weren’t made out of the blue. If it has been made, it can be unmade. Let’s not fight and then doubt ourselves that nothing will change. If even it takes one billion people to take a stand, it starts with one person. One person can change the world. Every concept starts with one man.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process they don’t become a monster. If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. We can be fighting for the very things we’re denying others. Let’s not also be hypocrites. One day the tables will turn. When it does, let’s not be like our oppressors.
We are going to fight for what we believe in. We will fight for what we stand for, and we will fight until the walls of oppression break down.
Why are people so much afraid of silence? Perhaps, the emptiness we feel in our immediate surroundings re-echoes the emptiness within us. We’d rather do anything than spend time with ourselves. I’m not talking about isolation. I’m talking about solitude.
Social media might have given us the biggest audience to showcase whatever we have but this is the time to realize you’re your biggest fan. You need to appreciate your own ingenuity because a time will come when others won’t, yet you have to keep on keeping on.
We now live in a world where even teenagers think they are busy. Busy doing what, brushing your teeth? There are times in your life that you’d need to self-quarantine. Not just a vacation to enjoy yourself, but a time to reflect. It’s by self-reflecting that we get to appreciate the people in our lives. You don’t have to wait till you lose something before you appreciate it.
Not spending time with ourselves has become the reason why people are in dire need for people to appreciate and/or agree with them. Low self-esteem. No self-approval. Yet, such a huge ego. Once all the distractions go away and the ego has nothing to feed on, then we can see beyond the fog and above the blindspots. But the distractions barely go away by chance. That’s why it’s necessary to be intentional about this.
If you don’t want to spend time with yourself, who should? People who don’t like to spend time with themselves have so much insecurities about themselves. It appears every time they are alone. That’s why it’s easier to put so much burden on others around us and have unrealistic expectations for them and yet undermine our abilities in areas we are good at. And funny enough, we begin to think we’re so much better in areas we aren’t that good at, actually.
It’s only by self-reflection that we practice metacognition. It requires us to relinquish our usual egocentric perspective and examine ourselves from the outside. Ironically, it’s when you don’t spend time alone that you begin to feel lonely. You feel that people aren’t there or won’t be there for you. Don’t expect people to be there for you if you aren’t there for yourself.
Spending time alone is ultimately thinking about what you think about. Perhaps, boredom will kick in, but boredom is the bedrock of creativity. If you’re not tired of something, why would you want to change it? Great inventions have come out of solitude. Sometimes, there are too many distractions that we don’t even have the time to think stuff through. With solitude comes clarity.
This season of quarantine has taught us many things, especially things we thought we couldn’t live without. Life is really about the basics. Once life is not built on the basics, it loses its meaning. So now that you have enough time to spend with yourself, do well to fall in love with yourself, tackle your insecurities, and change those habits you don’t like about yourself.
Pandemics happen when a new virus emerges to infect people and can spread between people sustainably. Because there is little to no pre-existing immunity against the new virus, it spreads worldwide. Viruses are microscopic organisms that can infect animals, plants, fungi, and even bacteria. They are considered the most abundant biological entity on the planet. A virus exists only to reproduce. When it reproduces, its offspring spread to new cells and new hosts. Viruses may transmit from person to person, and from mother to child during pregnancy or delivery. They can spread through touch, exchanges of saliva, coughing, or sneezing, sexual contact, contaminated food or water and so on.
Some viruses can live on an object for some time, so if a person touches an item with the virus on their hands, the next person can pick up that virus by touching the same object. Whether it’s smallpox, common cold, measles, chickenpox, and shingles, hepatitis, herpes, polio, rabies, Ebola, HIV, there is no cure for a virus, but vaccination can prevent them from spreading. If there is no cure, how do people recover? When you get a virus, you may not always get sick from it. Your immune system may be able to fight it off. For most viral infections, treatments can only help with symptoms while you wait for your immune system to fight off the virus. This means you’re more likely to survive a viral disease if you simply live a healthy lifestyle; a balanced diet, exercise, sleep, personal hygiene.
Humanity has come a long way and has survived the pandemic outbreak of new diseases which then had no known cause and treatment. From cholera to tuberculosis all the way to ebola, towns have been wiped out and cities have been quarantined in the wake of such calamities. Consider the Justinian Plague in 541 A.D. which claimed up to 10,000 lives per day. People were dying so fast that unburied bodies were eventually stacked inside buildings or left in the open. In the end, more than 25 million people died. What about the second greatest pandemic; the Black Death? Those were the Dark Ages of human history. The plague lasted half a decade and wiped out about 50 million people – more than half the population of Europe at the time – as people were buried in mass graves. The Third Plague Pandemic happened not long ago. Claiming over 15 million lives, it erupted in 1855 in the Chinese province of Yunnan. The disease traversed the globe over the next several decades, and by the beginning of the 20th century, infected rats traveling on steamships had carried it to all six inhabited continents. Not to talk of the Great Plague of London, the Great Plague of Marseille and the Italian Plague of 1629. Did I forget to mention the infamous H1N1 virus that killed one-tenth of the world’s population from 1918-1920?
Countries affected by coronavirus since its outbreak in January 2020
On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a pandemic. The coronavirus disease 2019 (or COVID-19 for short) is affecting 157 out of 195 countries. So far, there has been 167,682+ cases of coronavirus. 6,456 lives have been claimed and 76,598 have recovered. This means that the viral disease has a 3.4% mortality rate, that is, there is a 97% chance you’d survive after receiving medical treatment if you contract the disease. The symptoms include runny nose, headache, dry cough, sore throat, fever, a general feeling of being unwell and difficulty in breathing. Human coronaviruses can sometimes cause lower-respiratory tract illnesses, such as pneumonia or bronchitis. The virus primarily spreads between people in a way similar to influenza, via respiratory droplets from coughing or sneezing. There are four main sub-groupings of coronaviruses, known as alpha, beta, gamma, and delta. Human coronaviruses were first identified in the mid-1960s. The seven coronaviruses that can infect people are:
229E (alpha coronavirus)
NL63 (alpha coronavirus)
OC43 (beta coronavirus)
HKU1 (beta coronavirus)
MERS-CoV (the beta coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS)
SARS-CoV (the beta coronavirus that causes the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS)
Up until December 2019, we only knew of six coronaviruses.
Total recorded cases and deaths since January 22 to date
Coronaviruses are respiratory syndromes and they attack the lungs. Sometimes coronaviruses that infect animals can evolve and make people sick and become a new human coronavirus. Three recent examples of this are 2019-nCoV, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that are common in people and many different species of animals, including camels, cattle, cats, and bats. The sequences from U.S. patients are similar to the one that China initially posted, suggesting a likely single, recent emergence of this virus from an animal reservoir. Early on, many of the patients at the epicenter of the outbreak in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China had some link to large seafood and live animal markets, suggesting animal-to-person spread. Later, a growing number of patients reportedly did not have exposure to animal markets, indicating person-to-person spread. Community spread means some people have been infected and it is not known how or where they became exposed.
How come it’s spread so quickly throughout the world? Because people interact with people. In 2017 there was an average of 9,728planes in the skyat any given time, carrying an average of 1,270,406 people. Last year, a record 1.4 billion people traveled by air from one country to another and an estimated 2 billion people are expected to do so this year. Since the world has advanced in technology – speedy networking, speedy Wi-Fi, speedy transactions, speedy communications, and speedy travels – the world has also become more and more vulnerable in spreading any new negative outbreak. Diseases can now travel as fast as humans travel across the world. More so, it’s equally faster to hear news from the around the world. Though this makes people more aware and precautious, any empire and kingdom understand that the last thing to do is cause panic among citizens.
Why Do We Fear? When you study history and you see the numbers who had died because of a disease outbreak, they just look like numbers. 50 million people. 25 million people. 15 million people. Though there are far deadlier diseases than coronavirus like malaria, cholera, stroke, cancer and the likes, people are naturally afraid of the unknown. Coronavirus is a new disease with little to no knowledge of its cause, why it so easily spreads and how to vaccinate people against it. Not just that; how long will it continue to plague us and how many lives will it claim before it eventually takes a downward path? Even if it claims just 3% of its victims, no one wants to be a statistic. If I gave you 100 pieces of yam balls and I said 3 of them could kill you, you’d simply avoid eating any of them. The danger is only dangerous if it’s imminent.
Why Shouldn’t You Fear? Because there are a billion ways to die. Thousands of diseases have no cure. This is not the last major outbreak we’re going to see. Plus we are all going to die anyway and life is too short to live in fear and panic. Something must kill a man. As Baz Luhrmann rightly said, a life lived in fear is a life half lived. This doesn’t mean we should live life anyhow. It means that life boils down to the simple stuff all the time. There is a pandemic and you can prevent contraction by simply washing your hands, drinking more water, keeping the environment clean and keeping good personal hygiene. This cannot be done in isolation since one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. One sick individual in our homes can infect all of us with the virus. So look out for your neighbor’s well-being as well. Plagues do not stop with quarantining. They only stop after a corporate fight. So let’s mobilize ourselves and keep ourselves clean, not in any way paranoid of other people around us. Let’s go viral with living healthy lifestyles and keeping clean environments. The old adage still remains true; Cleanliness is next to Godliness.
Though there are new cases everyday, there are new breakthroughs as well
It accelerates to keep me from dying from your elegance
My hands cringe as my soul clings to the rhythm
With you, the world neither spins nor twists and turns
The winds quieten as I feel your breath flow into mine
The paws
The pause increases my pulse as your paws scratch my hair
Our lips dance as all of Heaven kisses the face of the earth
I waited so long for this day, and it was worth the wait
Stop reading between the lines, there’s nothing here to see
The pores
Open your heart, close your eyes
Open the dance floor, up close let’s dance
Though we are very close, we are so open to each other
Though we’d close at some point, let’s leave it open
The pours
My heart glows in ways I can’t understand
It gushes forth with pure affection for you
I enjoy your company, I know you enjoy mine too
On a more serious note, I do not want this to end
The pause
Please press play, remind me of my busy schedules once more
Before I fall flat on my face and have you fill all of my mind
Let’s keep it like this, for love suffers at high speeds
We don’t have to press pause on either; we can have each other and with each other face the stress
I love you ❤️
This poem was inspired by the stresses of architecture school and the fun of living. The question is not whether we procrastinate or not. The question is, “what are we procrastinating?” We don’t have to “play” everything. We need to certainly pause at certain points because there are some stages in life we cannot skip. Learn to pause rather than “stop” because you’d wish you could “rewind” to relive those moments. Press forward!
Every creator’s fingerprint is evidentially left on his creation. Everything God created manifests His Glory. Every living thing teaches one thing or another about God. God is seen in all He created. His creation was made in His likeness, but guess who is His best model? You guessed right! We are His masterpiece.
Jesus said you shall be witnesses unto me, not witnesses unto the world. Witnessing is not just evangelism. It is a legal term.
In the law court, when I choose a witness to support my stance, the person is a witness unto me. What does the witness do? He comes as an evidence that what I actually say is real and true. The world will believe if we live the life we promise they’d have if they believe in Christ.
We are a living evidence to the Kingdom of God. We are called to live the Kingdom life. You can only teach what you’ve experienced. You can give only what you have. You can impact what has been impacted on you. Walk the talk. Even children follow your example, not your advice. If you truly believe what you confess to be, then it must reflect in your life.
We’re a living epistle of Christ. This is the life. Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. Let’s be true models to the world.
God’s first foolishness is seen in his outpour of free will to His creation. Why give all heavenly beings free will if it can bring about the possibility of a devil? What makes it an even harder pill to swallow is the fact God knew it would happen. And He literally sets up the stage for it then watches it happen.
God’s second foolishness is seen in His creation of man. If God ever had a weakness, it was us. That’s why the enemy spends all his time trying to destroy us. God literally said that “…whoever touches you touches the pupil of my eye”, and that’s exactly what the enemy wants to do. Human beings are so dumb in the eyes of the powers of darkness. To them, we look like a prince who doesn’t know he’s a prince and lives like a pauper. They’re literally always licking our brains to believe in the dumbest things.
God’s third foolishness is putting that tree in the garden. He put right in the middle, where it cannot be unseen. Then, He tells the man not to eat from it. It’s like telling a kid not to switch on the TV and putting the remote right next to him. It only sparks more curiosity. Did God actually expect Adam not to eat from the tree? If He didn’t, why did God put the tree in the garden?
God’s forth foolishness is dying for the sins of humanity and giving us grace. God must be pretty dumb to think we wouldn’t abuse Grace. Now instead of praying to God for a car for many years, I can steal one in a day then ask for forgiveness. The picture of God in our minds has moved from an always-angry, l-will-strike-you-with-thunder schizophrenic to the Mr Nice Guy literally everyone takes advantage of.
But here is the Truth; God doesn’t need anyone to defend Him. He doesn’t need anyone’s advice. He doesn’t need to explain Himself to anyone. We are too finite to understand His infinite picture. He knows exactly what He’s doing. His Love cannot be taken advantage of and His Grace cannot be abused. The fact that he gave all of us minds of our own and even the ability to argue with Him that he’s wrong doesn’t mean He sometimes doesn’t know what He’s doing.
There’s nothing that has happened; that is happening; that will happen that has taken, is taking and will take God by surprise. He cannot be blamed for our own demises because of His foreknowledge of all things. Sometimes our way of thinking actually equates God to the devil if we think about it carefully. He has the right to punish yet He chooses to admonish love. He allows our mistakes and gives us time to mature. He’s not accountable to anyone but everything is accountable to Him. Though we may be His weakness, He is our strength. Though He gives us the free will to push Him away, He will always hold us close.
Love is such a wonderful thing when shared by two people. Love can and must be shared by all through all to all. Love has a way of bringing two people together into a different path and a whole new dimension of passion and commitment. Your soulmate must be out there somewhere. Perhaps, they may be a lot closer than you think.
Friendship becomes the primary selection ground for people who wish to end up with somebody they can grow old with. It’s the safe space of no pretence and manipulation where we can totally be ourselves and be accepted for who we are.
When a solid foundation of friendship has been established and they evolve and grow together.They get to know different chapters in their mate’s life. However, there is one part of it all that cannot be skipped: there are instances that one of them would ask if their mate is the right person for them.
It’s a risk. Thus, there is a need for clarity of thought and mutual understanding. No one can be sure if his or her mate is the right person unless he or she takes time to think through, ask questions, make inquiries and be settled in the heart this is the one and only. Yes, there is a need to make extra effort to analyze the situation and the person he or she is currently involved with.
There are some things about how we are that will change over time as we evolve in our thinking and perspective. However, there are certain aspects of us that defines us and will barely change. We are like everyone else in one sense and different from everyone else in another sense. This leads me to the first instance;
1. If the concerned person will get to accept the other person for the bad sides of their personality.
Obviously, there are certain things the concerned individual may not like about the other person. So in essence, it’s not whether there are certain things you dislike about the person; because there is. It is rather if you are willing to accept how they are. Everyone has bad habits that arise from their personality. It is these same habits that the concerned individual has to deal with. Hence, it would be better to assess if the concerned individual likes what he or she is seeing or if they can tolerate the personality of the other person.
These bad habits actually change over time. That is why there’s a need for relationships in the first place. The other person will not literally be perfect but the fact that the concerned individual can accept whatever the other person is, then, it must be love.
2. If the concerned person will get to accept the other person’s faults or shortcomings not because of some hopes that someday he or she will change, then, it must be the right person.
One should realize that accepting somebody should never be conditional. This means that when a person accepts someone who has qualities not included in his or her concept of an ideal mate, it should not be the basis for unnecessary expectations. Because if this is the basis of acceptance, chances are, the concerned individual will only be disappointed and the other person will always be at fault in the relationship.
3. If there are no obstacles that will in time kill the flame of love, then, it must be the right person.
If in the event that an individual finds somebody and they feel that the relationship is finally the real thing, it would still be better to assess if there will be no more impediments that would curb the growth of a wonderful relationship. This simply means that the person should be sure that there will be no elements or factors that will trigger some problems on their relationship in the future like vices, addiction, family problems, previous relationships, etc. If the coast is clear, then, the concerned person has finally found his or her right mate and that in time the relationship will flourish and be successful.
All of these things boil down to the fact that life is not 100% perfect. People should realize that there are no such things as perfect people. As humans, we are susceptible to mistakes, imperfections, flaws, and whatever weaknesses we are destined to entail in our personality. So, the best thing to use when identifying the right person is a careful analysis of the individual as a whole and not just what the naked eye sees where physical attraction is usually based.
Life is a paradox and so is truth. The only person who can step on your feet is the one closest to you. The only constant is change. The truth is, we can’t avoid all the mishaps in life even if we made all the right choices. Every choice we make, regardless of the motive, has both good and bad repercussions.
There IS right and wrong. But they are not necessarily at both extremes. There is actually a thin line between them. In our world today, it is increasingly becoming difficult for people to define right and wrong. What was generally considered to be wrong 50 years ago can easily become an acceptable norm 5 years from now. Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe right and wrong are not meant to be defined. Maybe they are meant to define themselves.
We are not powerful enough to control the balance of ups and downs, highs and lows or even foreknow if the good will outweigh the bad in any decision we make. However, we are powerful enough to choose right over wrong and good over bad with our limited discretion.
Most often than not, the decision is not necessarily between right and wrong. It’s between good and best. But wait, what if we make the wrong decisions because we cannot foretell which one would be a better decision in retrospect?
Assuredly, the more bad decisions we make the better the chances of making the right decisions in future. We make good decisions from the experiences we gained, and we gained those experiences from making bad decisions. Failure can surely lead to success. Nothing and no one can be utterly useless. If anything at all, it can be used as a good example of a bad example.
We are all not perfect, not because perfection doesn’t exist, but because we are too imperfect to understand how paradoxical true perfection is. Nature is perfect because of its many imperfections. Even bull shit fertilizes the soil.
At the end of the day, we are well able to appreciate the effects of our decisions and know for sure if we made the right decisions or the wrong one in retrospect. But even with the wrong decisions we made, there is no need to regret. “For we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”
Don’t be afraid to be wrong. Be rather cautious of thinking you’re always right, because you definitely shouldn’t be. So live life, being rest assured in the fact that God can take our mess and make it His masterpiece.
One should realize that accepting somebody should never be conditional. This means that when a person accepts someone who has qualities not included in his or her concept of an ideal mate, it should not be the basis for unnecessary expectations. Because if this is the basis of acceptance, chances are, the concerned individual will only be disappointed and the other person will always be at fault in the relationship.