Pained and beaten. Hurt and strained by the worries of life. Nothing seemed to hold, everything fell apart, the center couldn’t hold again.
She walked around the railway, expecting to be crushed, but the trains weren’t coming. Rushed to a busy road, expecting to be ran over and mangled by the tyres of fast screeching cars, none came.
She took a rope , tied it on an oscillating fan to hang herself, like a bang , NEPA took light . Tried to put her head in the noose, standing on a chair, as she pushed off the chair, her weight pulled down the fan , like humpty dumpty she fell on the floor.
To her convenience she rushed to pick up the half-full Snipper, gulped it down. For six hours she fell into a deep sleep. When she woke up and discovered that she was still alive, hale and hearty she rushed to a lagoon, tried to jump into it, was barred by a madman who advised her to just hang in there that God has not finished with her.
She desperately wanted to die, but death was too scared to touch her. So much desired to end what she called a miserable life, but nature and all its elements rejected her.
On a Sunday morning before people began to trickle in, she rushed to a church almost naked. The security men at the gate tried to stop her, her looks very horrible they may have thought. She pushed them off her way. The few church Wardens that came early tried to stop her, she ignored them. If they knew what an ordeal she had passed through, the pains and tribulations she went through and the mental and emotional trauma she had delt with, they would have heralded her presence in the church, embraced her warmly, knowing how less a consideration cloths were in such situation.
She was losing it. The whole world seemed to be on her head spinning around. Her eyes blurred and her ears opened but heard nothing.
Call her a walking corpse, such may be a perfect description of her state. Nothing mattered to her. Her looks were the lest of her worries. She desperately wanted an escape route from all her travails and anything that stands her way at that point was seen as distraction.
There are many like her that walk the streets; go to the market, go to offices and churches. Their burden too big for them and their worries too excruciating.
One sees them walk pass and get offended that they didn’t greet. One talks to them and they looked at one and move on. You think they snubbed you? They dressed so shabbily and transparently, too odd to be worn to church. Talk to them about it, they will think you are inconsiderate and insensitive of these challenges and possibly take it out on you.
Life is too hard for some people. Many are passing through hell and the gates of hell appear to be calling on some.
Let us be our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. In as much as dressing decently to church should be encouraged, being hell bent strict on it shouldn’t be; many are the affliction of those you see around only them and God know what they pass through.
Appearance matters, but when it comes to church, a place where we come for refuge, unburden and seek for help it may not matter much, for what is pushing and pursuing people may be too much and weighty, making what they wear less of their considerations.
But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. JN 4. 23-24
NB:This is not to encourage or validate nudity in church or anywhere. However there are situations one will see, it becomes very clear that this one is burdened, worried and emotionally stressed. Talking to them about their wears will certainly sound Greek . In such situation discretion and decerning mind are needed rather than hell bent strictness and castigation.
GOD WILL HELP US!
JARLATH UCHE OPARA JARLATHUCHE@GMAIL.COM
