Finding Love in Strange Places

The first place where one ought to find love is within one’s family 

If you find it here you will truly know what it is and your thirst for love will be satisfied and trained the right way 

You will know love is free and requires no price from you apart from acceptance and reciprocity 

If you can’t find love here, you will look to relatives outside of your nuclear family

Perhaps mummy and Daddy got it wrong but one uncle or aunt can fix that 

It is rare to find love here but some do

When you fail to find love here you then turn to strangers 

The love strangers offer is often not for free 

You get to pay in hard currency in cash and kind for this love 

Many have found themselves in relationships that cost them too much to share in the name of looking or searching for love 

Just to have somebody that will be devoted to making your life worth living

Somebody to keep a good record of you and tell you everything will be alright, somebody to look back and see that even though you didn’t deserve it, they went all out for you in order to ensure you become someone of value in life 

Imagine being a teenager and not finding love at home as you ought to, your aunt fell ill with typhoid and you were one of those who went to the hospital to wait on her and cater to her needs out of the goodness of your heart 

After hours of waiting, you fall asleep on a mat by her hospital bad and your grandmother comes in to care for her 

While you were sleeping, your aunt and your grandmother started talking 

You were roused out of sleep on the mat only to hear them talking condescendingly about your family, especially your mother 

They thought you were sleeping but you heard the most unpalatable stuff while lying there 

You could have behaved like your other cousins and disregarded her sickness as adult business, you could have chosen to go play football or go on a hunt on the farm like the others but you waited on her and that was your prize 

What a family!? What a memory!?

You swallowed it and moved on but you know there is no love lost there 

There was no love, period! 

You then go on searching, hoping someone would love you and care enough to allow you to love him or her 

You were searching for something you ought to get at home but which you never got 

You were searching for something that ought to be obtainable from your extended family but which they didn’t know how to give 

But you wanted love, you wanted to belong, it is in your nature, it is the air you desire to breathe, but it was never on the menu 

A family that does not know how to love and encourage one another is where you have found yourself 

They only thrive by tearing each other down 

If one has the upper hand today he or she would lord it over the others 

Nobody has a good story to tell of one of them building up the others 

Your father and his siblings were all mad cats, all they did was hunt and tear up their prey relentlessly and in an unforgiving manner 

This is not the stuff you want to become, this is not your nature 

"Why do I have to tear others down to believe I am great?" You wonder 

But nature is nature 

You notice the same attitude in your own siblings 

They couldn’t find love so they found the opposite of love

Schadenfreude is the pleasure one derives from the misfortune of others 

This was a pattern you noticed from childhood 

When you were in the university they had a meeting with your older relatives and concluded your school fees was too much and they could not support you in any way because your father was biting more than he could chew by sending you to university that was worth more than they thought was good enough for you 

They always questioned to condemn, never to understand and make better 

Your mother was never good because she came from a particular tribe, your father was never good because he did this and that 

Your uncles were never good because they did this and that 

You couldn’t find one example of where they all banded together and loved each other except at funerals 

The funeral of this and the funeral of that 

They all contributed money and acted as a family always after one of them died or when they were going to bury a member of the family 

They didn’t know it was a form of witchcraft but you saw the pattern and you felt it was evil and ungodly 

People go through several seasons in life which can be positive or negative 

The family was supposed to be a place to hide your head and get an “it is well” or “you are not alone” but this is not the case in your family 

If anyone dares to dream big, his dream is ridiculed and goes unsupported even when it is obvious the dream can be achieved with a bit of encouragement 

Their song is, “It shall fail or we will soon see the end of this” 

You didn’t take offense, you just decided this is not the kind of future you want to gift to your children and their cousins 

You wanted to reorder things, make a new reality for those you can help and let the ones with gall in their veins fade out of circulation 

If you can’t change them, you don’t have to join them 

You have seen enough evidence to know that love has been redefined in that circle to mean “impose your will and your way on him or her because he can’t make a decision for himself” 

Their idea of love and family was alien and devilish in your assessment. so you decide you will be like Abraham

You will start another lineage and dismiss the old way that your other siblings have embraced 

You will be a guiding light that will set in order the lost way of what ought to be and what is in your own generation 

It is not an easy feat but you are determined that when Christ shall come he shall find faith in you and call you a profitable servant 

This is your agenda and to achieve it you have to ruffle feathers and go it your way Or you could just stay with the norm and conform 

These were the options Jesus faced in his lifetime 

He came into a divided world 

A world in which the Jews saw the Gentiles as unworthy 

A world in which the Gentiles saw the Jews as arrogant and deserving of all the bad things that could happen to them-a  world of strife and pain 

The Bible says Jesus broke down the wall of hostility between the Jews and the Gentiles and formed a new nation by his blood so that love could bind them together and they could become one entity 

This is the essence of the love of Christ 

A love that refused to continue in the segregative and discriminatory way of Moses and the law but decided to offer a new approach to saving the world from sin 

Jesus came with grace and truth 

Grace canceled out all sins and faults of the past, present, and future 

The truth opened the heart of the believer to the reality of the possibilities in Christ so that in it every believer was empowered to get saved and live a life full of love and joy for eternity 

This is the greatest gift of love in history and no other sacrifice can eclipse it 

It is a love that is far above any other sacrifice ever made or that can ever be made

It answered the issue of racism, classism, creed, language, origin, and colour 

It created a whole new species of divine beings and called them a royal priesthood 

This is love at its best and it is the only kind of love that can endure times and seasons from generation to generation 

This is the only kind of love worth celebrating from Arkansas to Abidjan and from Jalingo to Djibouti 

Love so amazing, so divine

Amazing Grace, Amazing love 

Many of us find ourselves searching for love in strange places, in strange beds and strange arms 

We subjected ourselves to vanity in the hope of finding the substance that will define our lives as worthwhile 

We find ourselves stalking strange DM's and strange inboxes 

We know we just do not want to end up living our lives by ourselves without someone to bear a record of our lives and seasons 

We want to matter and we can only matter to that one special person before we matter to others who are drawn to the light we are shinning 

Many have gotten lost in their quest to find true love 

There is no love that can beat that which Jesus is offering and has always offered 

It keeps you warm at night and is not jealous or antagonistic of you when you find another kind of love with someone else while in it 

It is the right kind of love 

It does not choke or hide behind the devil instead of saying sorry when it has overstepped its boundaries 

It is the perfect love 

The love that we all deserve to have this Valentine's season 

PS: Enjoy the Valentine's Day celebrations, please 

Life is short and its joys in the flesh are very limited 

Make the best of each day

Make sure your heart beats for someone other than you 

Jesus recommends it, so embrace it 

When we give others a gift on a day like this, we show that we are mindful and thoughtful of such a person 

We declare that the person's well-being matters to us and that the person's life is worth celebrating 

It is important to make one another feel special and loved 

Valentine is but an excuse to express our love as we ought to do daily in Christ Jesus 

Happy valentines day to you

 -GSW-