Author: Deji Okegbile

LENT OF REMEMBERING (Day 29) – Overcoming Coronavirus (1)

They mounted up to the heavens and went down to the depths;     in their peril their courage melted away.  They reeled and staggered like drunkards;     they were at their wits’ end. Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble,     and he brought them out of their distress. He stilled the storm to a whisper;     the waves of the sea were hushed – Psalm 107:26-29 At the Feb. 26 start of Lent on Ash Wednesday, many people were filling the churches to receive ashes with little fear or global anxiety as regards the cases and spread of the coronavirus. At that point, there were many people arriving...

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G5 – Group of Blind World: Sight to the Spiritually Blind; Judgement to those who think they see.

The Gospel reading today from the ninth chapter of of John takes only two verses for the miracle and thirty-nine for the reaction (Jn 9:1-41).  The two verses miracle is the healing of the blind man and the thirty nine verses is about how the religious leaders could not refute the reasoning and spirituality of the blind man so they threw him out of the temple (Jn 9:34). The Gospel reading also points us to the G5 – Group of Blind World, each represents us in some ways. The man born blind from birth, born with a sin nature,...

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Unmarried Christian and Unmarried Church: Lessons from the Samaritan Woman.

In today’s Gospel reading Jesus encounters the Samaritan woman at the Jacob’s well. In the Old Testament, wells are meeting places, especially a secret meeting of lovers. Abraham’s servant found a wife for Isaac by a well; Jacob met his wife, Rachel, by a well. From a treatise on John, ‘A Samaritan Woman Came to Draw Water,’ by Saint Augustine, the Samaritan stands for the Church, the Bride of Jesus, ‘she is a symbol of the Church not yet made righteous. Righteousness follows from the conversation. She came in ignorance, she found Christ, and he enters into conversation with her.’...

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The Church in a Nighttime: Good News for the Old Nicodemites.

Today’s readings from the Genesis 12 and the Gospel of John chapter 3 are our stories and they are more than just biblical stories about other people in a different place and time. The church, family and our nations’ journey of faith today suggests a journey through darkness and the need to come to Jesus in our nighttime for salvation and deliverance. The truth is that we all step into the nighttime of our lives ‘through a call from God, a crisis of faith, or the circumstances of our lives’ just as Abraham’s and Nicodemus’s stability and predictability of...

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LENT OF REMEMBERING – THIS MONTH IN 1945

On 14 February 1945, in the midst of war, Lent began in hope of repentance, ‘acknowledging the things we do that hurt ourselves and others, confessing our complicity in continued injustices, taking responsibility for the suffering that comes from our abuse of the gift of our freedom, and accepting our part in the destructiveness that threatens humanity itself and turns life to dust and ashes.’ Rather than repentance, the world engaged in reprisal and counterattack. Lent of Remembering this month in 1945, 75 years ago through the Chaplains echoed God’s words to Adam with a reminder to people as mortal, sinners,...

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