Wandering and wondering: how did we end up here?
We didn’t plan to cross the line, didn’t plan to go astray.
Betrayed, usurper sneaked in, stole our joy, our dreams,
Our innocence: led us away like sheep without shepherd.
Deliverance hid its face from our anxious tears. Breathless,
We hoped and watched as faith sank every step;
Every day a horror, our quest for glory now gory
Our courageous adventure splintered into racking nightmares
Clinging to our skin, burrowing into our souls, not appeased
Or shirked. We wept at what we’ve become, at what’s become us;
For decorous dreams we nursed and pursued. We craved amity,
Yawned for safety, for heroes who’d stake out their lives for ours
But all we saw – strangers and terrors; days of dishonor,
Nights of misery, our bodies hacked, piling; homes overrun
Overtaken; tears mingling with blood, a river in the desert
Where we’re herded about by monsters in human skin.
Are we forsaken because the world has gone blind?
We thought they said all lives mattered? Is conscience now asleep?
Arms of aid too short? Our lives worth nothing as our killers claim?
Did hope desert the helpless at the merciless hands of barbarians?
We glance up in the wild, counting bodies once known, rotting;
Heaven clouds and cries, stirring, steering drowsy hope
Yet we wait for someone somewhere, to take up the voice we lost
To rise up, stand up, speak, fight where we were denied
But alas, no one, no sound, no stand: we die, not because evil kills
We die because the land is quiet, we die because care is silent
Yet we hope, that sympathy will depose apathy, storm this prison,
Shatter chains, level perdition, fill out this abyss that isolates us:
O that mighty aid hears our cry for safety, wipes our tears for home,
Let us crawl out of helotry to liberty, to effulgence they promised
Will never be ours again. O that deliverance dawns in desolation
To usher us back to safety and to home sweet home.

Last week, I reposted an article I shared earlier on the senseless killings targeted toward eliminating people of faith in Nigeria and other parts of the world. In line with that, this article was also first posted in 2014.

If you have had to move, you know that relocation is not an “Art-for-fun.” People who have had to move know that it requires extensive planning and execution, nevertheless the actual move does not always go as planned. As is typical with reality, planning is one thing, actualization is another story altogether.

Now consider that what you plan is often not what you end up doing since you must incorporate dynamic changes that turn up during execution. That doesn’t make moving any easier. And if it is that hard with all the planning and resource allocation, how much worse would it be when all of a sudden you are forced to move, without notice and without aid? How much harder to be herded as helpless sheep who have nowhere to go and no choice in where they end up for no fault of theirs? And how even harder when that compulsive move is coupled with loss of loved ones, means of livelihood, life savings, health, peace and security? This is the everyday reality of people like you and me.

If you imagine being uprooted from all that you consider valuable and dear, the shock can be traumatic. Especially when replanting takes place in an environment that offers less than you have been used to. Yet, people deal with these on a daily basis in varying proportions; the old and frail, women and children, boys and men, find themselves helpless to defend and protect their families; abandoned by a world that should be crying out and moving mountains to help; abandoned in the hands of men without mercy or care for life.

Displacement is hard to imagine and harder to live. As we enjoy our freedom, which whether we accept it or not was secured and is maintained at such a high price, may we prize the lives of many out there, who are left no choice but to wander, exploited and wasted by men with warped visions while the world loses focus. And as often as we remember, may we live appreciative of where we are and what we have instead of grumbling about what we want and where we think we should be. And with whatever we have, in whatever way we can, may we continue to pray and to do unto others as we would have them do to us if tables were turned.

Glory!