Editor's Letter - 9th issue
You will sit and choose your words, carefully mention this before that, make sure this story corroborates with that event on that day and that story on the day after. They'll be processing this month's bills or reading the newspaper. Another day of daily business. You will make sure that you project an air of confidence and composure that's masking confusion and ambivalence inside. They'll raise an eyebrow at the rising prices. Or the bad coffee you made.
They'll open their mouthes or maybe just one of them. One line shoots out and heads straight for you: one line too much for you. They really are your parents. One line deconstructs your entire charade of the past hour. And they still have time to continue drinking their coffee and finish the newspaper. They're not insensitive nor ruthless. They neither wish to strip you of clothing nor hold you hostage to your own attempts of self-salvage. They just know you. They look at you and they know you. One line answers your question, validates your fear, and leaves you skint.
You can't hide after all that. Their eyes turn to you and they feel like a million pairs. You've tried to fool them, but you're a fool. You try to hide from God and it's folly. The power of God seems to abound when you expend all possible to give him what he wants to hear and he does according to what is inside. What he wants to hear is what you're hiding. So, you shuffle the cards, you strategise the movement of the pieces. You play, you move. It doesn't work somehow. God moves the pieces on the chessboard, after your tail is getting tired from wagging, and they turn out to be the best moves for you. The height of walls grow and you shrink.
Yet, he condescends and comes to touch you. He finds you as you're foaming at the mouth, unaware of the ridicule being poured on your head. He feeds you as doubt prospers, even as you see him defy the laws of probability and fill your baskets with fish. His ability to transcend what you think is insurmountable first fills you with awe, then guilt once the awe is flushed out. Awe or guilt, he's still reachable.
Perhaps his greatest power is to empower you to use what you have of your mind, spirit, and personality. Yet, how Christ gives power to us is a mystery to be experienced and overwhelmed by. And to be tickled pink and to be struck dead in your tracks. To be flushed with the lack of words.
But Jesus knew their thoughts.
Midiane
Editor, Efmevi.
Comments are not available for the editor's letters.
