That thing called Faith

Mark 16:1-3

When the Sabbath was over, Mary

Magdalene, Mary the mother of James,

and Salome bought spices so that they

might go to anoint Jesus’ body.

 Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb

 and they asked each other,“Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”

If you've never heard of this story, its in the Bible, right after Jesus was crucified and buried in the tomb. These three women, Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James and Salome were among those who had been following Jesus during this 3-year ministry.

If you have heard of this story, well then you know that although these women worried about that huge stone covering the tomb, they soon found out that the problem was sorted out for them.

I was reading this again recently and it struck me that, whether they knew it or not, Mary Magdalene, Mary and Salome exercised faith. Think about it for a moment...
These 3 women would have never been able to roll away that tombstone by themselves. Yet notice what they did. They went anyway.

They could've called some men to help them roll the stone away. They could've asked for more women to join them. Maybe then they would've been able to roll it away. Joint effort, you know?
But nope. They just went, ready to prepare Jesus' body.

It got me thinking, when I know I should do something, do I just go? Do I just do it? Or do I first plan everything in my mind...make sure I'm properly organised...have a solid plan, then go?





It takes a lot of faith to just get up and do, whether you're a Christian or not. So shouldn't it be easier for us who believe and profess Christ in our lives? We have something we believe in, something solid, as much as we may not see it. We're not just relying on ourselves. Therefore it should be easier for us to have faith. Should be. That doesn't mean that it always is.

The subject of faith is one that always brings one of my closest friends to mind. She amazes me by her faith. She does it literally; believing in what cannot be seen. And she does it not just once in a while, or when push comes to shove, but she does it everyday of her life.





I aspire to be like her. I aspire to be like Mary, Mary Magdalene and Salome. I aspire to be a woman of faith.

Men and compliments

A few days ago a man stopped me to tell me that I look good. Now I know all the ladies understand how this usually goes. Most men will smile suggestively or wink and give you a 'compliment' as they eye you like they want to devour you. "Eish msupaaa!!" is what you usually get as a young woman. What was different with this situation is that this man did not act as expected.

I was walking home after a long day, laden with house shopping. The sun was in my face, the paperbags were heavy and I was tired. So when this guy tried to stop me with an "Excuse me," sure enough, I ignored him. But he stopped walking and said,"Hi." I stopped too, thinking maybe he was someone I knew and just could not remember (trust me, it happens often enough). That's when he said,"You look good." And immediately, he walked away. I was so surprised that he had no other intentions that by the time I said thank you, he was too far to hear me.

I walked home smiling to myself and thinking how unusual that was. The man just complimented me and moved on. I even posted this situation as my Facebook status cause I found it refreshing (I was only going to tweet it, but Twitter was down at the time...lol).
I think this is how the world should be..people complimenting each other just to let them know, instead of using it as an opening statement to a 'hit-on'. Is that a word by the way? Hit-on?

So, this post is dedicated to all the men out there who can compliment complete female strangers without asking for more. And women, when a man does that, don't get caught up and start thinking he likes you. Such behaviour (when he was genuinely just giving you a compliment) is a sure way of making him never do it again!

Soo many books

Am I the only one who has been caught by surprise at how fast this year is moving? Things that happened in December (and I mean the last few days of December) seemed to have happened eons ago. And now it’s already the 6th day of March! Where are the days flying to?

When I think about why this subject bothers me so much, one of the things that comes to mind is a challenge I gave myself. You see, I love reading novels. Always have, always will. I read for many different reasons but the major one is to get out of my own life situation and into someone else’s. It’s pretty cool once you discover all that you can learn from reading about someone else’s life. In fact, sometimes you may find that what you read about addresses certain aspects of your life exactly. It may not necessarily be areas that you have ‘issues’ with…even everyday things you do can be related to the characters. So back to my challenge.

I joined a website called Goodreads which basically provides book lovers with an avenue where they can tally the books they've read, join discussions about their favourite books among other things. Goodreads provides an opportunity to any willing user to challenge themselves to reading a certain number of books in a year.  And as you've probably guessed by now, I decided to challenge myself with 55 books in one year. I assumed that it would be easy-peasy since I am a fast reader. However, I underestimated a couple of things:


1) The fact that I would drive to school at least twice a week, instead of taking a matatu. This automatically reduced the number of free hours I would have used to read my novels.
2) That my courses this semester would be more demanding than I anticipated.







And hence my current situation: an overload of assignments + required housework =less time to read books = me being 2 books behind my challenge.

*Sigh* I should actually be working on an assignment right now, not blogging. A friend of mine, Lulu, tried to tell me that I should just forget about this post and focus on my assignments, but I knew that I would not be able to concentrate until I'd let this out. Now that I'm done though, I suppose it is time to get to the assignments (Shout out to you, Lulu :) ).