By the rivers of our tears, there we sat in pains as we remember Zion- our good old days. Left alone, I cried out in despair, “Open the eyes of my heart, I want to see; open the ears of my mind, I want to hear. Show me the way out because the travails of my people are long overdue, we are perishing beneath the heavy burden we are carrying. Where is thy face, O God? Why is the sea of my people’s troubles not abating? Why is our mountain so high that we can’t climb and our valley so low that we are scared? Tell us the solution because we don’t know what to do.”
Those were my words, my heartfelt prayer to God and many more till my voice failed me, till my strength diminished, till my eyes decided ‘lights out’, till my heart shut down, till my spirit slipped out and my body dropped in unconsciousness. I opened my eyes and behold, I saw myself standing on the shores of life, in between heaven and a dark space. Then, somebody touched me and lifted me up. It was an angel and he pointed towards a direction. When I looked, I saw a BALL rolling out of the dark space and illuminating the place. Suddenly it broke into pieces and a fragment of it was a GUN POINTED DOWN advancing towards me without any visible mechanism controlling it. Next, I saw a wonder: behold, a mighty hand held the gun, pulled the trigger and expecting it to release a bullet, I was both shocked and disappointed at the same time when I saw a big YAM TUBER coming out of it. As if that was not enough, the yam tuber fell to the ground, started germinating and out of it, a CONE was produced which grew so high to the sky.
“Why are you showing me all these? How can a gun fire out a yam tuber? And how can a yam tuber produce a cone? Do you want to drive me crazy? Stop messing with my mind!” I kept charging at the angel but he said nothing. He merely took a handful of water from God-knows-where, washed my face with it and asked me to look inside the Cone. I did and behold, I saw people fill the streets in disorderly manner. Row and acrimony took over the atmosphere, anarchy here and there, everywhere you turn. I saw some people running for their lives, those that stayed back could not rest in peace. The insecurity was so unbearable as everyone was in constant fear of what danger will come up next. The sky above them was angry, the cloud was furious and even the earth was hot against everything on it. I was confused. Was it about to rain? I asked and prayed for the sun to shine. Immediately, the prayer was answered, the sun shined and I smiled thinking that was the solution. But till the sun went down, the tension was not eased, the predicament was not reversed. The sun just could not help out.
*** to be continued***