Monday, August 17, 2009

a story of a cellphone can reflect a story about one's life itself!

So I did it. I have officially married the new Mr. MTN. He paid my lobola with a phone I could not open fast enough. Well, please don’t tell everyone that I paid for my own lobola that is a disgrace but this is how it is.

Ok, let me start the story from the top. I have been looking for a new phone for almost 2 years now.

The first 6 months was the last 6 months of my contract with Mr. Vodacom and we were going to take the matter further but no perfect phone presented itself.

So, I kept waiting and watching for the perfect shape, perfect features, perfect price, perfect as decided by me. Once in Vodacom when I expressed these desires and then they asked me to present my then current phone and the man uglily (allow me to form this word) and insensitively jeered at the fact that I even thought anything was wonderful about the one I had that I would even wait and weigh any future phones. That hurt me but I persevered with Vodacom till the final story of his unkindness towards me which included stripping off the numbers I loved. Change was then forced. This was practically being kicked out of the house and he changed the locks. Yellow glory awaited me. I came from blue how could I trust this yellow? I should have seen the colour as a good sign because I love the colour anyway. So I sort of fearfully looked at MTN direction. I then went to further discuss options of taking the relationship further with their phone deals. My sister waited in the wings for my other phone until she got herself another one because no phone would please me. She gave up.

My younger brother also attempted to solve my cell-phone problem for months until he also gave up. Almost 2 years later on Saturday, I thought my eyes finally found rest on this one phone only to find that it is missing one important thing – a better camera. So Mr. MTN shows me another one. He does not know that my dilemma hardly has all to do with function but function is as important as form perhaps a little less important. Function is wonderful but form must be just right. This is not a reflection on how I pick the perfect gentleman. Sort of but not quite. His function must be glorious enough to make his form look like a mere shadow even though the form is dearly acceptable if it is glorious. I have owned very few cell-phones in my life.
If one measured commitment according to that, then I think that I would pass for one who has very high commitment levels. I don’t get rid of you as soon as there’s something that sparkles more than you. My cell phone searches kind of reminds me of how my older brother picks a girl from the thousands who are already interested. He waits, weighs, thinks of every angle for what seems to be forever and we pray but clearly not nearly enough yet. But now I think we have added on the list somethings like ‘will she cope with the family?’ No. Not that kind of coping. Back to my phone. When I lost my phone 3 years ago I waited for 3 months and lived without a phone for that period. A phone is personal so here I do not apply my recycling methods. I also rejected all wonderful offers. I am sure you can’t believe that. I apply different rules to different things. I had to find one with my name written on it at first glance. I believe in love a first sight. If I like you at first sight I will like you forever. I am yet to be wrong. It has nothing to do with what one does but what my spirit tells me. So one glance at Sony Ericson and it sang my name. I owned it for 3 full years and struggled to find something I would feel the same way about.An i-phone is for stars and people who like things.
I would have liked it but its not enough. It’s not about the money and the glam. So I thought well something sort of similar in an affordable price range but it’s got to be right. Well, I went to Mr. Yellow on Sunday. The matter was settled in a few minutes with no endless paperwork. Little money involved and there it was. I asked if I could open it. He said sure. I did everything I could to compose myself. I managed. My hands could not be steady, I could not open the box fast enough.

Mr. Yellow looks at my hands then looks my face, he looks at the box again and as though he were seeing something far more to be happening here than his usual cellphone sales, he was compelled to say: “Oh, just let me open it for you. It’s like you’re opening a Christmas present!” he exclaims. I realise that I have been found out. After all, what woman opens her own engagement box and puts it on her own finger? It was Mr. Mtn's job to do this. He opened it and said: "take it". I grab the phone and it is marvelous to touch and  to behold. I exclaim: “Dude Yes! Do you know how long I have waited for the perfect phone and now to find it! To own it!” More points for Mr. Yellow Mtn as he says: “Can I see what did you had before?”
I whip my old one out and he responds sincerely impressed: “O yes, that was a really nice phone.” Mr. Blue in Vodacom had looked at it coldly and jeered that I had thought any good thing of my Sony. Mr. Yellow said it was great even though he had just slipped the sparkling more wonderful new ring on my finger. It’s not the most expensive phone on the market, no sir, no ma’m but it is the loveliest and most elegant phone I am yet to own. The ladies love it. The boys at work got their hands on it and they love it. They want one even though one just got a brand new phone 2 weeks ago. It is the new Nokia XpressMusic. Needless to say my boss has just walked in to come and see this phone the boys are talking about.

All I can say is thank you Lord :) Ask and it shall be given you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened. If God knows the number of hairs on our heads He sure can knows what fragrance perfumes we would most delight in or even cell-phones. He names every star. He counts your hair. He knows our full days. I didn't pray all the way to the cell-phone shop but God knows our thoughts before we even think them. He knows our past, present and future (Psalm139). The number of our days are in His books already. God knows every detail, the mundane, the important, the frustrations, the things that cause our hearts to thrill and He wants all of us – not just what we think He should know. He is either Lord of all or not Lord at all. He is Lord over this cell-phone too.

Much love SeekYe first the kingdom of God – not cell-phones and other things 1st and then those things will be added unto you…

Gotta go – I have some God seeking to do. Siki! Peace and love to you!

Rom 11:33-36
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been his counselor? Or who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory forever. 
Amen

Friday, August 7, 2009

The greatest love gift

O the beauty of the grace God has lavished upon us! Grace is surely the most profound of all love gifts. It is the expression of the highest, deepest, widest love imaginable. Grace must be the highest form of the divine expression of His goodness towards us. If we miss this we miss everything that embodies Him. If we do not see this love we will not know His love, we will not appreciate it, we will not receive it and we will doubt His unquestionable goodness to us. God's grace is the ultimate window from which to see the truth. If it is not this window then all humanity is lost in darkness with no perception of this liberating truth that breaks every human bondage.

Grace tears the curtain that disqualified us from glory. Grace qualifies us for God's unattainable standards of glory. No king is worthy for this, no queen or prince nor priest of any kind but the miracle of the virgin birth of the Son of Man with incorruptible seed.

to be cont.

Friday, May 29, 2009

Losing what is not lost

It’s simple.

Treat it like a death.

She told me that.

Has she ever experienced a death?

I asked.

Yes.

She repeated.

Treat it like a death.

I understood what she meant.

I equally did not.

How can you treat the living that way.

Not just any living

But the living you love so desperately.

She was telling me to die.

Telling me to hate myself.

She is right.

But when do you begin to live?

Is there a time to wait for?
When do you know?

Is this the only way I can live.

To die?

Monday, May 25, 2009

reasons to love you

How many ways do you love me?
More than the number of my precious many hair strands.
As copious as the number of the stars floating in the many galaxies.
How precious is your love for me?
As prized as the weight of all the gold in all the mines found,

How costly is your dedication to me?
All the earth’s jewels were not enough to purchase my engagement ring to you,
All the angels in heaven put together were not enough to prove your might to me,
So you purchased me with your own death so that I might never die.
Never.
So that I should live with you forever.
Forever.

How much do I long for thee?
As a deer pants for water in a desert,
As a barren woman for a babe,
As an unrequited woman for love,
As a prisoner for freedom,
As a poor man for an inheritance,
As for a dying man longs for the next breath
So I long for you
Jesus


(c) Siki Dlanga

Thursday, April 23, 2009

SA 22 April 2009 Elections and my creative spiritual experience

There was an unusual sacredness to the day yesterday. There was a silence not even Sunday carries. There was a reverence and a cleanliness in the air as if Someone purified the atmosphere for this sanctified moment as South Africa voted. It is as if everything waited with her, for her because she is worth it. Even business could wait.

Foreigners were scarce as if giving South Africans the space to be to make their mark. We stood together for hours in what seemed like a rare opportunity.The night before, my body was brimming with energy. I could hear a beat and my body begged me to respond. The African drum drummed in the ears of my soul until I burst forth in an African dance my body had hid for so long. Thankfully I was alone in our spacious rented house. The song was like a prayer. But not any prayer, a happy prayer. The drum beat spoke of a time that has come. A time for change.

I have never been so excited for an election than this one before.Gilly comes to collect me so that we can join others to pray. We pray into various aspects of the country and for the politicians to be able to fulfill what they have promised.

We first spent about 10 minutes thanking God for our politicians. I thanked God for Zille’s zeal, Zuma’s charisma and charm, COPE’s courageous leaders and Holomisa among others. I thanked God for Malema too. I just cannot recall what I thanked God for but I wanted to thank God for Malema’s humour but I did not come out with it as others were listening and awaiting a serious prayer so I said something. I just cannot recall what.I went back home. I sang over Africa and South Africa and felt God’s intense love and joy over this country curse through my body.

I felt an unusual peace midnight.

I felt an absence of evil in the air because Saints everywhere had been praying. In that hour I knew the winner very well. I knew it was God’s choice, I accepted it hence my response surprises me today. I felt a hope for this country like I can not describe. I felt God’s favour shining on this country. I heard His song – I felt us beckoned to come out and play because we are now safe to do so. I saw a brilliant new day for us.What a day the 22nd of April 2009 was for the South African. It was a day set apart. We the people voted. We. Us.I arrived home so exhausted because so much of my energy had been spent praying. I never slept much then I woke up and queued. I came back and I slept for a while.

Then. That drum began playing again. It called for change again. I heard it until my body prayed in dance. Again I had the fortune of being alone. Lest my brother and my housemate think surely other spirits have come upon me.If there was such a thing as a Christ inspired witchdoctor - I discovered one.

The name sangoma probably means something like we-sing rather than the English version of witch doctor. It is probably “the one who sings and calls the spirits”. That is the closest interpretation to the word sangoma. Well, I sang and called up not the spirits of the dead – God forbid. I sang and danced and called up the Spirit of the living God to blow in all the corners of the country and my body danced in a prophetic dance I have not experienced it before not like this.A new way of praying was born, in prophetic African dance and declaring a prophetic song.My hands burning with God’s presence, as if set ablaze.

I prounced around as if I knew what I was doing – there was a lioness in me that was bellowing that was declaring the things of God as if I were a prophetess of some sort. Something like that sangoma – the one who stirs up the Spirit of God.I know that change has come in South Africa.

God is with us even in a way we too do not quite understand yet. Creativity will explode in ways we never quite imagined. God is with us. Change has come in a different form in an unusual suspect of a president who incidentally sings and dances. He has danced his way to victory. A victory we hoped would not come. We hoped he would be jailed but he would not be stopped. He sang and danced and the gates would not be shut.What is this we find ourselves in? All I know is that there is no doubt in my heart and mind that change is here even if we did not vote for the form in which it has come.

Thursday, February 12, 2009

I am not a poet by Siki Dlanga

I am not a poet
I just know the everyday is miraculous everyday
I see leaves dancing to an invisible song and I acknowledge it
The sun laughs in the sky and I laugh back
I am not a poet
I just realize the last breath I took was a divine act the next one too
My eyes marvel at the reflection on the mirror not because of my own beauty but for the wonder of sight
I am not a poet
I see lovers eyes hugging as they stare
And I sing them a song only I hear
I smile at the child with a dummy
I am not a poet
I am amused and I respond with bellows of laughter
I hear a musician play and my body sings with a dance
I am not a poet
I was never a poet
I hear the melody of words in the silence of chaos
The same way leaves dance to the invisible hum or thud
The same way waves to the shore
The same way humans breathe
The audience to an incredible performance
I am not a poet
I am just alive to life
I feel the touch and my heart remembers
I see and my mind applauds or frowns
I am not a poet
I am just alive
I taste and my tongue skips with joy
I look at the pain of others and I pray and God responds
I am not a poet I am just alive
The same way the night knows when to give way to the morning
The same way stars shine at night even when we do not see their light in the city
The same way clouds sometimes paint the sky
I am not a poet
I have never been a poet
I am alive to life and have always applauded the wondrous fading magnificence
I have always hoped of what was, could be and will be or
Grieve at what will be if we do not

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

God used to be white

My feelings about President Obama’s inauguration are written on the faces, hearts and speechless mouths of the millions and a billion black people in the African continent, especially in South Africa and America. No one knows what yesterday meant more than those. No one.
To say anything at all in this hour feels like taking away from the centuries of those who suffered, prayed, believed or lost faith, died in hope and then we find ourselves being that generation whose black children will no longer think that God is white and only favours the white.

No matter how long justice seems to take, our generation knows without a doubt that God never forsook us because of our skin colour. We now know without a doubt that God loves us all passionately and will fight for everyone of us until we see it, even if it takes centuries to prove it because He is eternal and not trapped in time; even if we will not believe in Him. He will fight for us still. First in Mandela, then in the same lifetime in Obama we know that God is a just God no one should ever doubt that after yesterday.

O for the prayers prayed by mothers left behind in Africa longing for their children sold to a foreign land? O for the cries of the slaves, for their songs? Prayers they thought were unanswered, yesterday we all know were heard.

In South Africa we knew that freedom was incomplete so long as the African-American still felt oppressed. Every now and again they flocked to South Africa just to see what freedom felt like, some mocked. Yesterday our freedom was complete because theirs was.

What happened yesterday was not a story of colour but that of all humanity because had not the majority of Americans voted for him, yesterday would not have been a historic event.

For the longest time I was burdened and unable to find a solution of how God can cure the pain of the black soul. The pain Micheal Jackson so desperately wanted to purge he thought he could erase the colour of his skin. My own healing would not be enough – what about the millions? I was overwhelmed by the weight wondering how God could heal a wound so deep that has been felt for so long by so many and inherently passed on from generation to generation. It had become a disease flowing in our blood. Yesterday was a miracle that cured the blood that flows in our soul. It will no longer be passed to the next generation unless our minds remain enslaved and we do not walk as free men. We are healed. Even if we see evidence of the past we know it is a counterfeit.

The past is officially passed.

We live in a new era. We are who we choose to be. We have no one to blame anymore – we can fight the demons of the past that are hidden in our minds that tell us we can’t, we fight them because now we know we can.

Now we know that God favours us all. I so appreciate the effort He has made to make us feel so special so that we can look at our black faces and love what is starring back at us. The veil is lifted. Light is shining in the darkness. Africa’s creativity will finally come out to play! The world has seen nothing yet. We have been fought for and we are the ones who get to live the impossible dream. Africa come out and play! Arise shine! Put on your garments of splendor! Bless the world with your excellence again as in the days when your civilization was the wonder of the world. While you are at it please be humble because there is no one to prove wrong any more. Share the love that has always been in you! Share it with the world!

God bless Obama the son of Africa birthed by an American mother. All of Africa is praying for this man. All of Africa prayed for SA to be at peace during our historical transition….you can be sure all of Africa is praying for this man!
I sure have been.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

We are slaves of our beliefs

Everything rises and falls not on leadership but on faith. We are what we believe not what we claim to believe but what we truly believe when we are tested and everything we know tells us that our faith is false. When the lights are out and everyone is home. When we are awake and cannot fall asleep. We are the thoughts we choose over and over. We are the thoughts we accept all the time. We are treatment we tolerate.

Most naturally we are what we do not even think to question.

We can never rise beyond our beliefs. Our faith is the sealing it tells us how far we can go so we must watch what we believe.

"Without faith it is impossible to please God."

If we truly believe that God is infinite we will see greatness the size of the God we believe. This is the case if we believe the opposite. We are enslaved to our beliefs. We serve them and they serve us back.

Now what is it that you are enslaved to.

From a slave of Christ
Siki Dlanga
at least I hope I truly am

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