I AM GRATEFUL TO JEHOVAH (I)
My cake, when I, H.O. Ojewale, clocked 58 on the 17th of March, 2013.
Reminiscing God’s timely and miraculous intervening involvement in the predicaments of the vicissitudes of my life, I just find myself in such verbal bankruptcy that, all I have left is, “Thank You Jesus!”
I do remember, in my younger days, how through carelessness I had destroyed stuffs, but these days I have, on several occasions, knocked receptacles and I see them roll unbalanced only to come to an erect still with my coffee, or contents of other containers, well intact! You may be very quick to ascribe this to mere fortuity. What I do see is the invisibility of the invincibility of His salvaging hand. The good Lord still cares about these little things.
A needle tiny object falls or gets misplaced and a little, “God, please help me find this thing,” prayer is all I need to say, for God to accord my ocular prowess the capability to beam my visual competence on this otherwise inconsequential thing. Small, inconsequential things do have their ways of needling you to madness. My deep rooted gratitude goes to God for attending to these little things which to You, dear God, “are not just little things in the eyes of Your love, oh! LORD!” as one of Reverend Chris Okotie’s songs says.
Psalm 91:5-6 reads, “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; 6) Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.” I boast of a perfect savvy of what the psalmist is saying here. I encountered a demonically intimidating experience which threw a horrendous scare into my psyche. This was neither a dream nor a trance. It happened in broad daylight, while lying on Dad’s bed, nursing a terrible fever.
Wondering how the drone of a bee could find its audibility inside the bedroom, I just felt a bundle of a thick rope thrown on me. After an involuntary shiver from the impact, try as I did, I could not move any organ, feeling strapped! The natural impulse when thrown into such apprehension is to make the noisiest frantic call for help. The evil doer envisaging that, placed his hand (I truly felt a real hand!) on my neck and lo and behold my vocal chords would not bring forth any audibility. The next outlandish thing was the dragging of my lying body out of the bed! I was not under any hallucination at all, and that is the gospel truth.
In that present predicament I found myself resigning to the prevailing circumstance. I believed that that was how I had lost my two younger brothers to death, some months earlier. Knowing fully well that I was conspicuously at the end of my tethers for: there was nothing I could, personally, do; I began to pray inwardly, saying in my Yoruba language, “Jesu, gbami! Jesu, gbami! (Jesus, save me)” repeatedly. Still being dragged I began to feel an untying process which stopped at the tug of my hair. I thought I could tear myself out of that evil clutch but it was yet quite impossible until it was pulled out like the pop of a cork from a wine bottle. Half of my body was out of the bed when I was finally freed!
The great Usain Bolt
I would have landed with a thud if I had not stretched my right arm and the right leg. Flinging my dad’s the large covering cloth with my left arm, I hurriedly used the other arm to grab the door knob and bolted hotfoot through the door. The legendary Usain Bolt could not have run out faster! It was a hot sunny day about 1:30pm! When I looked to the right I saw my father, about three blocks of houses away, coming home.
I relayed everything to my speechless father.
If not for my Jesus, my Dad would have come home to be traumatized with the death of another son from his loins. Thank You, Jesus! I was just fifteen years old. For the next couple of years I dared not sit anywhere alone, not even at any time of the twenty-four hours of the day. If it should happen, I would be taking sharp looks over my shoulders thinking with apprehension, “they’re here again!” Most of the nights, I must sleep very close to my mum. (…to be continued…)
Be wise, get born again. Say this simple prayer: “Dear heavenly Father, I come to You now in the name of Jesus Christ. I believe in my heart that Jesus is the Son of God. I believe that Jesus died on the cross for my sin. I believe that You raised Him from the dead. I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and I receive Him now as my Lord and my Saviour. I give God all the glory. Amen!” (…to be concluded in the 2nd part)
Get the concluding 2nd part here
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