Deceiver...you too shall pass...

The truth and end of all liars  by Rudo Nyangulu

Words are your friend;
They help you create your greatest master pieces;
falsehood after falsehood your web is spun;
Where you entrap your victims once led astray;
Like the Pied Piper of Hamelin;
Your melodious words of promise and things to come;
Entangle the simple and weak minded;
Posing a challenge even to the savvy.
Alas!
One cannot live in disguise for long without losing self;
One cannot pretend to others without fooling self;
One cannot lie to those closest without cheating self.
The greatest pretenders lose the most;
They rob  themselves of who they were
And all that is left is a decaying carcass masquerading as a human heart;
Whilst the soul is left blackened by the resulting spell cast by the web of lies it created;
Only to ensnare itself in the end....

Now those retched words have become a foe;
The very worst of bed fellows in this lake that burns without end.

Copyright (c) Rudo Nyangulu 2010. All rights reserved.

Revelation 21: 8 "But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death."

Introducing Pronounced Gospel

Just when you thought I was exhausting all I had to say on this blog, I have had the privilege to be inspired by God to start an evangelistic campaign to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to all those who do not know him and the amazing, unconditional, inexhaustible love that He expressed at the cross for you and I! This 'Good Friday' as we sit around coffee tables drinking tea and eating hot cross buns, let us lend a moment to remember the sacrifice Christ made on the cross when He paid the price of our sins so that we could if we so wished to be free!                                                                PronounceD GospeL is an artistic project that has come about as a result of several years of labouring and ministering in outreach evangelism in my local church and around the country as well as investing in missionary work overseas. The aim of this project is to show through imagery and text, the need for evangelism in our world today! Every Sunday over the next 52 Weeks we will look at the need for evangelism and give you ideas on how you can get involved and share your faith effectively, fulfilling the 'Great Commission' set for every Christian by The Lord Jesus Himself.

Don't miss out! Log onto:  http://pronounced-gospel.blogspot.com/

Romans 5:8 (King James Version) ‘But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’

Jude 1:23 (NKJV) '...but others save with fear,pulling them out of the fire...'

Was there life before the internet?

In the picture (above) is my dear friend and housemate Rumbi and I (I, being represented by the second laptop facing the camera that’s sat on my lap). We are on the couch working on different things on laptop computers and occasionally speaking to one another, mainly to request songs we are “streaming” [this is a one-way audio transmission over an internet network - http://www.answers.com/topic/streaming-media]. We then started talking about the population of the world (yes, all 6 billion plus people) and I said that China had the largest population in the world which we agreed but then we started to wonder which country was the largest geographically but did not know and after about 30 seconds Rumbi said, ‘why don’t we look it up online!?!)  To which we both turned back t the laptops on our laps and started searching away… in less than a minute we had the answer…Russia! Yes, just like that, at a click of a button we had out on our couch, access to a multitude of libraries and all their information were available to us…

The World Wide Web (WWW) has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing before. The invention of the telegraph, telephone, radio, computer and Internet set the stage for this unprecedented integration of capabilities. The internet was invented by Sir Timothy John “Tim” Berners-Lee, a British engineer and computer scientist between 1989 and1991. The Web has become a medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without regard to geographic location. http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventors/berners-lee.htm.

I wonder if the scene I described earlier is the idea that Sir Tim had in mind back in 1989 when he first suggested the global internet… Had he considered the possibility of groups of people in different countries around the world being able to share their every moment together through social networking sites such as facebook or twitter? Or the online dating scene that brings strangers together and sees countless relationships and marriage unions formed as a result? Had he considered the possibility that I would be in a country 8 256 km away from my parents and would be able to see them on live video as well as chat to them daily using an IM medium (instant messenger and Skype to be precise). It really is an amazing feeling each day when I get to see my Daddy through a webcam conversation on Skype each day and it is really great to be able to brainstorm ideas, ask her questions and share my day with my Mummy through Google talk, these systems and indeed the internet is so much more important to me personally because I have not seen my parents in person for a few years…The same is true about my sister in America and my brother when he was in Namibia. The internet has taken traditional distances and geographical space which used to be a barrier to regular communication and brought Zimbabwe, Namibia and America into my living room and onto my lap in my laptop.

My friend stated that she studied for her whole degree without withdrawing a single book from her university library because all the information she required was readily available on the internet. Others can complete degrees online whilst residing in a different country. With the boom of dot.com businesses, many companies exist solely on the internet and transact through online mediums without owning a single shop. The World Wide Web has in twenty years completely changed the way we communicate, how we see each other, who we can meet, how we work, are educated and how we do business for better and for worse…The internet has many dangers and like all things, there is a good and a bad, but for people like me, who have family scattered across the globe and friends to boot! It has given an opportunity for relationships to be maintained and continuously invested in, in real time… Sir Tim, I salute you!

Life...

                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Life...is the interval of time between birth and death. 

That is the physical, mental, and spiritual experiences that constitute existence.

“If you know nothing at all in life, know this;

That yesterday is a canceled cheque;

Tomorrow is a promissory note;

 Today is the only cash you have;

…so spend it wisely…”  (S. Cha)

I recently received the quote above and I thought it quite profound in its estimation of life. I must confess I don’t often reflect on the full constitution of life and its depth of meaning…which I suppose is not prudent for one yet to navigate through life, seeking a station and place for purpose. However on this occasion I ponder on this very question…What is life?

Life can be defined as, ‘the property or quality that distinguishes living organisms from dead organisms and inanimate matter, manifested in functions such as metabolism, growth, reproduction, and response to stimuli or adaptation to the environment originating from within the organism’. However I prefer this definition, ‘the physical, mental, and spiritual experiences that constitute existence’.

A cancelled cheque refers to a cheque that has been cashed or paid [http://www.investorwords.com/5435/cancelled_check.html]. When we consider our own lives in this way, a cancelled cheque could refer to successes we achieved as well as failures we paid for. Those that were successes signify the things in our past that we got right, the battles we won, the lives we touched, the hope fulfilled and general good times…The failures we paid for refers to the those things we got wrong and the regrets of the past, the things we didn’t achieve, the battles lost, the time wasted and joy lost…I find that there are two types of people in life; those who spend a lot of their present, living in the past, regretting and living out the consequences of their failures with no hope of being present in the now. We may know that the past is time spent that we cannot recover, yet often people take the view that if the ponder on it long enough or dwell in its failures, those cancelled cheques would somehow become paid. The reality is that those who are trapped in the issues of yesterday, they completely miss living their today.

Tomorrow…the day after today…the future… the unknown…the dreams yet to be fulfilled… Those who are not focused on their past regrets are often focused on worrying about their future.  The bible tells us that, ‘no man is promised tomorrow’, that is, you do not know the day and time you will die… so what is the point of worrying? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we shouldn’t plan for our futures, but once we have made plans, we need to start making headway to achieving them by living in the now. Being afraid that you won’t achieve or succeed tomorrow often paralyses people and stops them from trying to do anything…FEAR, a state of mind that says, ‘I can’t’ often robs us of the promise of tomorrow and all its possibilities… A promissory note can therefore be described as a promise to pay a negotiable amount. Therefore God determines how much time you receive in your future which is changeable until you posses it. [http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/promissory-note.html]

Cash is the physical currency you have in hand that has a corresponding value / worth that is at your disposal today [http://www.investorwords.com/747/cash.html]. This is today, the now opportunities, the things we see, feel and experience in the present.  What we are doing with our now is what is more important than what happened yesterday or what will happen tomorrow. No is when we can make positive changes to mitigate the effects of our past mistakes on our future. Now is when we can refocus and redirect our energies into the most important things. Now is the time to make a positive impact on our local communities, invest in the future of the next generation and have an overall positive impact in the now… Martin Luther King, Jr.  once said, ‘an individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. Life must have a purpose beyond satisfying self, seeking for its own and gaining for its own benefit…A life that constantly looks back, overlooks today in fear of what its tomorrow will bring and sets out to achieve for itself alone is indeed a wasted life…