JOHN 3:16

 

JOHN 3:16

For God so loved the world,

He gave His only begotten son.

Whosoever believes in Him,

Should not perish but have everlasting life.

 

Do you really understand what this means?

 

For God so loved the world,

He gave His only begotten son

To a world where man hates fellow man,

Murder is permissible

Dishonour, fashionable,

And sin is our soft cushion:

Sons kill fathers

Fathers kill sons,

And mothers abandon their babies.

 

Where are role models for the gentlemen and the ladies?

 

 For God so loved the world,

He gave His only begotten son,

To a world where fornication is splendour,

And hypocrisy a constant action:

Man sleeps with man, woman with woman.

Father with daughter, mother with daughter,

 

And this, they call the new world order.

 

Nudity is in season:

Decency, an archaic, despicable style.

Forget marriage.

It’s nothing more

Than walking down a well-decorated aisle.

 

Dead bodies traverse the earth in artistic piles.

 

For God so loved the world,

He gave His only begotten son

To a world that doesn’t believe He exists.

 

 Behold! John gives us a new twist:

 

For God so loved the world,

He gave His only begotten son.

Whosoever;

Thieves, smokers, drinkers,

Prostitutes, murderers, fornicators,

Rapists, idolaters, even adulterers,

Believes in Him,

Shall not perish but have everlasting life.

(Written by Edgard The Bard. One of the poems in the book One Last Smoke).

I SPY WITH MY EYE (PART ONE)

 

Allow me to introduce myself;

My name is Lucifer.

I am he who comes to steal, kill and destroy!

Apparently, that’s all I am good for.

 

When I look at the church today,

When I look at the body of Christ,

When I look into your googly Christian eyes

This is what I see:

 

I see a culture of dishonor.

I see people that dishonor God

By living worthless pathetic lives that are

Contrary to the Old Man’s identity.

 

I see people dissatisfied,

Wallowing in the belly of mediocrity.

I see people resting in the sacred arms of poverty,

Investing in the tainted dollars of unbelief

And in the evasive art of lack of self-esteem.

 

I see people too attached to money;

Clamoring onto pieces of paper

Like flies to dead flesh.

I celebrate you for who you truly are:

A servant of idolatry.

 

My hollow soul weeps for you.

For when I look at you,

I see something that is worse than me.

…

I have weighed the value of your life

And found it worth nothing.

Darkness is rising!

I see it rise in your heart

Like a wildfire.

I see you breathe its air!

I smell it,

I hear its voice!

 

I feel it;

When you raise your voice in contempt

Of your parents.

I feel it coursing through your veins

Each time you insult and disrespect your President.

 

I see dishonor of the body.

I see my good old friend immorality.

I see fornicators and adulterous spouses

Clinging to the whims of the flesh

Like a leech hanging onto human flesh.

 

I see the reign of death!

 

I see marriage for what it truly is;

A deal that spouses make but can’t keep.

I see a body that happily embellishes

The prospect of sickness and disease,

You are too proud to believe in healing.

 

So, I see the reign of death…

EDGARD THE BARD: ABOUT ONE LAST SMOKE

EDGARD THE BARD: ABOUT ONE LAST SMOKE:  Grief. Grief is a shared unit of the human condition, an emotion that hard as we may try, we cannot escape. For many years, I had been runn...

ABOUT ONE LAST SMOKE

 Grief.

Grief is a shared unit of the human condition, an emotion that hard as we may try, we cannot escape. For many years, I had been running away from grief, particularly grief as pertains to the loss of a loved one. I often testified, thanking God that I had never lost anyone close to me. I never knew that portion of grief, I never thought about how it would feel. Even when people I knew lost their loved ones, I prayed for them, consoled them, but from a distance. From the safe position of not feeling the pain that they were feeling.

Feeling.

Then, the unthinkable happened. Like a thief in the night, grief made its move; swiftly, definitively. He struck, and immediately, I got added to the list of those who had lost a loved one. Someone I had talked to, someone I had shared a laugh with, someone I had prayed for, someone I had cared for, someone I had touched...someone that meant the world to my best friend. Unthinkable...I couldn't think. What happened next shocked me. In the hours that followed, I was bereft of feeling (weird right?). Nothing! No tears, no sadness, no nothing.

But as the days went by, I discovered that most of my appetites had deserted me. Sleep was a luxury, no dish or meal was worth putting in my tummy, and my beloved TV became a vessel transporting noise pollution. I was numb... numb to all but voices. Voices that debated existential notions; the meaning of life, the certainty of death, what happens after death, etc. Voices seeking words that could aid the ailing heart of a best friend.

The pen

Naturally, these voices longed to be heard. So I transferred them onto paper. The written word was the other appetite that remained alive. With each stroke of the pen, feelings I never felt frothed and heaved. Paper after paper getting overwhelmed with questions, with grief, with metered words to a best friend, with hope...with comfort from God.

One Last Smoke is a statement of loss; loss of life, loss of love, loss of hope. Loss of fear, loss of sin, loss of slavery, loss of rejection. It is a journey of reflection; fear, and sorrow, but also; hope, love, comfort, and transformation.  

My prayer is that with every title, every paragraph, every syllable, and every punctuation mark, you will be taken on a personal journey, a journey that will lead you straight home.