IT IS A JUNGLE OUT THERE!

                                                     

The Amazon jungle is one of the most beautiful places to visit if you are a nature lover. The diversity of flora and fauna existing in it is more incredible than the Hulk. But the Amazon is also one of the most dangerous places in the world. The poison dart frog, the piranha, the anaconda, the jaguar, poisonous plants, unfriendly tribes with their curare laden arrows are some of the reasons why you would always have to watch your back in this neck of the woods. Any traveler with a bit of gumption knows that to traverse this naturally booby trapped environment, a guide who knows the terrain is indispensable.

MTN usually tells us that life is beautiful. But as beautiful as it is, life is equally dangerous. We all live in a jungle albeit a cosmopolitan one with glassy skyscrappers, sleek machines, fashionable peeps and what have you. Like Piranhas lurking in the rivers of the Amazon, cancerous cells in the blood gobble up life and vitality. Akin to the poison dart frog, people in a vituperative way release poisonous words that kill the spirit, diabolic fiends cast poisonous spells to wreck destinies, foes and philosophers spin beautiful webs of lies (the poison dart frog is very colourful and beautiful) to trap the soul like killer spiders. Every day science tells us that some of the things we enjoy eating are now inimical to our systems like edible looking mushrooms which turn out to be lethal on consumption. Hypertension and cardiomyopathies crush the heart the way anacondas do. Terrorists and natural disasters unleash terror in the same way as jaguars. Comparative to unfriendly tribes’ curare laden arrows, sophisticated guns cough out bullets in a paroxysmal burst of death. The snakes of recession crawl in slowly to give finances that have been squirreled away deadly and venomous bites. In Nigeria, our roads are pits of destruction like the uncharted trails in the heart of the rainforest. A good deal of the time we come to our wits end like a newly arrived US marine in the Vietnamese tangled growths. We live in a world gone mad.

But what is has always been. David Jesse more than four thousand years ago in one of his most famous poems talked about terrors by night and arrows by day, mostly by philistines I presume (bullets by raiding marauders in our case), pestilence that walks in darkness (Avian flu and other insidious hardy bugs), destruction that wastes at noon day (9/11, UN building and Boko Haram, natural disasters). This guy’s world was so crazy that he went ahead and got himself a Shepherd. The bro said that even in the thick of the shadows of darkness that resembles that of the Amazon on a moonless night, he doesn’t fear squat because of the presence of his Shepherd.  His Shepherd was so good that while his enemies (wolves, lions and all sorts of predators) were gazing at him with eveil intent, a buffet was spread out before him. He was safe and relaxed like someone sipping chilled coconut milk and drinking in sunshine on a hammock somewhere on the beaches of the Bahamas.

Thing is, in life the enemy would always try to lock us in the cross hairs of his destructive firepower like a ruthless assasin. It is only the presence of a Shepherd that will prevent each person from becoming dead meat rotting on the floors of the jungles of life. The Shepherd makes sure we don’t want for protection.

DO YOU HAVE A SHEPHERD? WHO IS HE???