Random Thoughts of a Girl in Nairobi

   I have been learning this recently. It’s so easy to look at the finished product of a process and not appreciate what it took to get there. To forget the cost. To assume that it was easy. In our Christian walk we often ask God to ‘mould’ us in His image. We pray for growth and strength and change. But we don’t always think about what that entails. Being moulded means being broken down into the most basic form and then being remade in the image of the artist. The substance is pounded and squeezed and pressed and contorted in new ways until it bends to the will of the moulder. It’s all fun and games until you realize that you’re the clay. And life is squeezing you and crushing you in so many directions and you look up at heaven and ask God if He forgot your agreement. You say that He’s taking too long to give you the things you asked for yet you also asked to be more patient.    And in the moment, you can’t see where things are going and what the fin...

   And by that I mean a generation that literally has no hope. And that’s ironic considering the sheer number of campaigns aimed at making us feel better about ourselves. Campaigns and strategies that we cling to with all we have. And it helps for a while. But you can’t put a band-aid on a bullet-wound and expect the bleeding to stop. It’s not practical because that’s not what bullet-wounds need.    We've lost hope in the prospect of wholesome relationships. We've lost hope in our parents. We've lost hope in the very systems in put in place to govern our society and help us live our day to day lives. Because most of us have been hurt ten times over or have seen the hurt in those closest to us. We tweet daily about corruption in the government and all the things wrong with the systems in place and rarely do we see our outcry come to fruition.    So it’s become easier to not care. To drink away into oblivion because it’s not necessarily our prob...

Everything's fine? Everything's ok? Not really!    You know what I'm talking about.  The kind of Christianity where everything is fine and everything is OK.  Where we're happy all the time because Jesus took our problems away. The kind where everything is right in the world and nobody suggests that you may be wrong. The kind where we say one thing and mean the other. The kind where we're all dressed-up but broken inside. That kind of Christianity.    There are two sides to every coin and this is the flip-side. There are things things that you may be struggling with and Jesus can take those off your hands...  but it's a process. God is not a magician and He can't make it all go away overnight because how will you ever learn. How will you not fall back into the same patterns without knowing what it cost for you to get of them. Even addicts don't necessarily get clean by going cold turkey. not without serious adverse effe...

  As Christians sometimes we avoid doing the wrong thing by talking ourselves out of it.  Like I won't lie because I'm a bad liar. Or I won't have sex outside marriage because I could get pregnant. So we walk around pleased with ourselves for upholding the commands that we've been given in the Bible. It's a means to an end, so that makes it OK, right? Wrong.     It's a weak defence against sin. It's easy to talk yourself out of something wrong. It's just as easy to talk yourself into it. Rationalisation is a very shaky fallible foundation. Just like that guy who built his house on the sand. In the end everything comes crashing down. The truth is that we are meant to do what the Bible says because God says so. Simple. It makes it much harder to sin when you know that doing so would be an offence against God and not whatever shaky man-made beliefs you may have. This is something that I was reminded of yesterday Needless to say, it was a total li...

   I came across this challenge on my friend's blog:   The auxiliary diary   and I decided to give it a try. The aim is to give different attributes of God using the letters of the alphabet. Sounds like a piece of cake...huh? I found myself spending more time with my Bible than I usually do and that was pretty cool. Feel free to try your own challenge or chip-in in the comments section. Here goes: A for... Awesome Deuteronomy 7:21(NKJV) You shall not be terrified of them; for the Lord your God, the great and awesome God, is among you. B for... Benovelent Ephesians 2:4 (NKJV)  But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, C for... Creator I saiah 40:28 (NKJV)  Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, The Creator of the ends of the earth, Neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable. D for... Deep 1 Corinthians 2:10 (NKJV) But Go...

   Religious persecution is stupid! You hear? Stupid! I don’t understand what makes anyone think that you can force somebody else to adhere to your religion. You came to this earth alone and God will judge you alone. So I don’t see how your neighbour’s ‘unbelief’ or ‘wrongdoing’ will affect you. Aren’t you supposed to be worrying about your own wrongdoing? And don’t look at me like you haven’t got any.    I mean sure, the Bible charges Christians to spread the Gospel. But it doesn’t tell them to hold-people at gun-point and make them pledge allegiance to Jesus! Our job is just to tell them not force them. Remember that verse where the disciples were told to shake the dust off their feet at a town where they weren’t welcome? Luke 9:5 New King James Version (NKJV)  And whoever will not receive you, when you go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet as a testimony against them.” Plus the whole idea of being hateful to others is pretty...

I've decided to come out of the closet. And it's funny because I watched a video last year that had the same title but the message didn't really strike me until recently...when I was making a very small decision in my life. Now...hold on before your imagination runs wild. I'm talking about the closet that you might be automatically thinking about. I'm talking about Closet-Christians...get it? no? let me explain. I'm talking about the people who walk around terrified that their not-necessarily-born-again friends and colleagues would judge them if they found out that they were saved. I'm talking about the people who euphemise going to church on Sunday as 'being busy during the weekend'. I'm talking about the people who skip praying before lunch at school to avoid potentially awkward questions and possibly stares. And I promise I'm not judging you because I know what it feels like to be in your shoes...sometimes I still walk in them. It...

   I wanted to title this post as ‘voices in my head’ ( plural ) but that sounded a little weird in my head...but you can like vote on it or something. I should probably get serious now.    You know that God’s been working in your life when that little voice inside gets a little louder...and probably starts to speak more often than it did before. And I’m not sure how many Christians would actually admit it, but that voice starts to speak up at really inconvenient times. And I end up having these conversations with God ( sometimes out loud...sometimes in my head ). And I say stuff like ‘God I know that this is what you say in your word...and I should probably take the high road and do the right thing... but I really don’t want to! But I’m going to do what you say anyway’. I end up doing the right thing and obeying Him and completely giving up my reluctance, but it feels better to just be frank with Him about my feelings on the subject.     Maybe ...

   Human beings...we just can’t help but want to belong. Everywhere we go, every person we meet, we want them to like us. To be impressed by us. We find it easier to blend in than to go against the grain of things. Maybe because being an outsider is scary and not many people find themselves comfortable with that. So we end up doing a precarious balancing act between fitting-in and being true to ourselves. When does it stop? When does one finally have the strength to do the right thing and risk social shaming, instead of laying-low and watching wrong things happen?    Look at our politicians. Always changing opinions and partys depending on who’s in and who’s out. Giving up their principles somewhere along the way coz everyone else is doing it, and by the time elections roll round you as the voter have to re-acquaint yourself with whatever new thing they’re preaching this time round.    The other day my teenage brother asked me if it was important to ...

   I can’t tell you that it’s all going to go away. That whatever situation you’re going through will be miraculously resolved by morning. I can’t promise you that if you pray hard enough that the tide will eventually turn in your favour. Let’s be honest people! Sometimes God says ‘No’. Just because you want something to happen that doesn’t mean that He wants it to. You know every time that you say the Lord’s Prayer and you reach that part for ‘Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven’; well that’s for real. Because God’s will may not always be the same as your will, and God’s will trumps your will on any given day, so yeah, His will will be done! But the beautiful thing is that His will keeps our well-being in mind. It works to build us up not to tear us down. Jeremiah 29:11  For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  And sometimes the things that bui...

I haven't blogged anything about the Westgate attack in the past week. I think I was looking for the right words. How to express my condolences and try to comfort all those who were affected. How to explain the pride I feel when I open my wallet and spot my national ID: the one that says Kenyan. How to tell you that through every day as we were praying I always had faith in God, and I knew that the whole nightmare would end. Yeah, those are a lot of things to try and put into words. But if you're reading this, and you need a little encouragement, I'll leave you with this: Psalm 3:1-8 NKJV Lord, how they have increased who trouble me! Many are they who rise up against me. 2 Many are they who say of me, “There is no help for him in God.” Selah 3 But You, O Lord, are a shield for me, my glory and the One who lifts up my head. 4 I cried to the Lord with my voice, And He heard me from His holy hil...

   I don’t pride myself in being a poet, or an expert in the workings of the universe. I don’t think that I have the answers to everything, In fact I’ll admit that there’s a lot of stuff that I really don’t know. A lot of stuff that I’m still trying to figure out in my life. But what I do pride myself in is the fact that I’m here. And sometimes that’s all we need. Someone who’s currently at the exact same place that we are or who has been in the exact same place at one point or another. Someone to hold our hands or pat us on the back and say that ‘’it’s ok’’ or ‘‘I know what that’s like’’ or ‘‘you’ll get through it’’. That way I know that everything that happens in my life might someday be an inspiration to someone or maybe even a lesson. It could be a friend or a sibling or maybe the kids I haven’t had yet.    I mean think about it. There’s this verse in the bible that says nothing new under the sun. Actually it’s:   Ecclesiastes 1:9   What has been...

   I think I’m at a point in my life where nothing surprises me any more. I mean when stuff that comes along just doesn’t catch me off-guard anymore. Maybe it’s just pure experience. The fact that I’ve gone through so much in the past that I can finally sit down right now no matter what and say it’s gonna be ok. And not just say it for the sake of putting up a brave face, but saying it with the full knowlenge and faith that it’s true. And then I came across this verse.    And you know what,....Bring it on! All the challenges and the disappointments. Because I’m sure of one simple truth. That He who is within me is greater than the world. So I can definintly take it.    Ciao...    

   I am a control freak. There I said it. But only because it’s true. You remember those old movies where the bad guy’s evil henchmen repeatedly failed to beat the good guy. Then the bad guy would get upset and probably say something like ‘You can’t send a boy to do a man’s job’; he would then proceed to do the job himself ( not that he succeeded ). I’m that kind of person. Sometimes I’d rather do something myself because I trust myself, I have confidence in my competence and quite frankly, others have already failed at it. This is why last year I found myself facing the hardest thing I’ve ever done.    I had to re-sit my end-year exams. Passing meant that I’d move on to 3 rd year. Failing meant that I’d repeat 2 nd year. Imagine telling your parents that they’d have to pay an extra year’s worth of university fees ( Not pretty ). And even if I chose to change courses and kick medicine to the curb, I had no idea where to start or what I could change to. Obviou...

   This was the thought running through my head at the start of the year and it’s the same thought in my mind as I sit here with music in my ears waiting for my pizza while writing this. I'm going to be honest and say that 2012 ended in a pretty crappy way for me. Stuff just happened at the end of the year to completely shake up my confidence and sense of reality. But through it all and the incredible things that followed I realized that I was just passing through a crucible and I was meant to come out better at the end of, it all. And I reached a point here I literally sat and told God ‘I don’t know what you’re doing in my life, I’m not even sure that I like it, but I trust you’. I once referred to myself as a serial optimist while chatting with a friend. And I’m not ashamed of it, neither am I afraid of it. How can I when His word tells me stuff like:     I don't believe in coincidence and definitely not, in chance. Because in my few years I have s...

I think I have finally grasped the importance of reading and memorizing scripture. And It’s not necessarily only so that we don’t sin against God [Psalms 119:11 Your word I have hidden in my heart,That I might not sin against You]  (Ok that’s one of the major reasons but I think there’s another). It’s so God can use it to tell us something in our most crucial moments. Moments when we desperately need encouragement so we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Moments when we need to be tapped on the shoulder so we can pay closer attention to the rightness or wrongness of the things we are about to do. Moments when we need to tell a friend something other than the over-repeated and cliché ‘I’m sorry for your pain’ and instead need to give them something to hold on to. And so many other moments like these. In fact, [2nd Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for ins...