The ManicaPost
Morris Mtisi Post Correspondent
I will not dwell upon Christmas. Why? Because I am grown up in thought, belief and stature! I now know that Jesus was not born on 25 December and I am not mentally so poor as to believe the world speaks Christmas every year to commemorate the birth of Jesus. Everything associated with this day has grown farther and farther away from having anything to do with Christ whose mass it must be that Christians ought to commemorate.
Instead people the world over, Zimbabwe included, use the day as a scapegoat to travel, meet with friends and family, drink and be merry, feast and enjoy music and dance.
The more people shout the name of Christ or Christmas…whatever, the more the world grows darker and darker.
And the devil is at the centre of it all as seen from the incidences of bloodshed, reckless speeding and driving on the roads, fist fights and bloody drunken brawls ending in injuries and deaths.
Clearly none of this brouhaha can be associated with celebrating the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. It has nothing to do with Jesus. It has everything to do with both our intrinsic and extrinsic joys…even our wickedness.
The obvious humility into which Jesus was born, namely in a manger and to a simple carpenter and his very ordinary village young woman…not a queen, is a striking contradiction with how the people worldwide today decorate their Christmas with colourful trees, neon lights and material joyous show-off accompanied by boisterous merriment.
There is not one prayer to remember the one whose birthday the day is about, but lots of eating, drinking and music and dance most of which Jesus would be angry about if he came back every 25 December to witness his birthday.
Sometimes I wonder why mankind is not afraid of celebrating God’s begotten son in exactly the same way they celebrate their own birthdays.
It is a sobering thought to learn how mankind has become so narrow-minded, may be haughty or simply blasphemous, to do for God, for Jesus the Son is God, exactly what they do to each other during their own birthdays…and even worse because they do not kill each other and drink to death on their own birthdays.
Since Jesus was born two thousand years ago, man’s simple mind has not been intelligent or wise enough to realise that Jesus’s birth is not as ordinary and temporal as our own births. Jesus is God, all serious Christians know this truth and there is no way God could have been B.O.R.N. in the literal sense. So God was not born.
He was simply there. Because He is God. So the way we celebrate ‘His’ birthday through His son who is He, cannot be the way we celebrate the carnal man and woman’s birthday.
This is not a simple birthday whose date anybody can and knows. This is not the same birthday written on cards and on which cakes and chocolates, new shoes and dresses feature…birthdays where the ones who were born think about themselves and not those who fathered or mothered them.
I am not sorry I seem to know more about what Christmas is not, than what it is.
It is the New Year that means so much to me, not because we are coming from Christmas. But because it is an empirical transition from one year into another.
And this does not happen because one is clever or wise. It happens by the grace and love of God that one crosses that boundary as if it were a right. It is not.
I am also tired of cheap routine repetition of textbook principles about sets of resolutions that never come true only to be repeated the following year when a new year begins. People must however grow up.
And growing up does not mean counting the number of New Years one is going through. It means the calculated courage to change one’s life through wise decisions…re-branding oneself.
A fool continues after every Christmas and New Year to plant the same seeds but expecting different harvests. It does not happen.
Change direction and purpose if every New Year gives you the same or less harvest. Identify new strategies and positions in life in which you can easily unlock your potential. Put yourself, listen, YOURSELF, nobody else, in a position that makes failure difficult or impossible.
Do not always blame those who enslave you; blame yourself for accepting slavery. Where is your tenacity? Who are you? Many youths today especially those working for the first time, waste their time imagining they are great people; celebrities, some call themselves without anything in their hands to celebrate except their imagination.
Spend time thinking who you are and what you want to achieve. Amplify your own image and potential. Your most valuable asset is yourself, not another person. Make correct inferences and conclusions about people around you and assess your job, your work place. Where are you going to be in a few years to come? What are my chances of remaining where I am or falling even?
A NEW YEAR is the right time to move, not to celebrate figments of one’s imagination. Reject glory in artificial success. You have a credible reputation to keep and maintain.
Create opportunities. Associate with the right people. Refuse motivational speeches to change you. Change yourself.
The best motivation is from within, not textbooks or people’s mouths. Discover your worth and do not allow anybody to use you or despise you. Walk towards accomplishment, not servitude. Do not specialise in useless show-off and unprofitable imagination. Zimbabweans are free. We are free people but servitude and slavery have not left us. We are free slaves of thought and conscience.
We are our own prisoners…but remember we are also our own liberators. Each New Year must build a new person in you…a new reputation…a new image. Stop blaming Establishment for everything wrong. Stop blaming people…even those who exploit you, keep you thumbed down and enslave you. Blame yourself for not doing something about it and about yourself. HAPPY NEW YEAR! Let this make sense no matter how insensible it may sound. Happy New Year! Despite the sham and drudgery of this ugly and difficult world, it is still a beautiful world. Strive to be happy, even if it means smiling without showing the teeth…Be Happy!
