I am a TEEN, not a THING

*How We Came Through 2025*

With eagerness and anxious counting, we all followed the steady ticking of the clock as it tocked. It hit dawn and was followed by a hullabaloo of *Happy New Year!*
🎉🎉🎉
The year had begun. The feelings and gaity of the gale of joy echoed in thunderings of fire crackers and twinkles of fireworks of glistening colours of the rainbow spread through the sky, a vibrant burst of sparks.

We jumbled into January with fresh hues of hopes and an avalanche of aspirations anchored on promises that never fail.
We heard prophecies, some intended to deter, others of peace and hope, and some other of lurking, looming dooms.🥸😳🥶

January passed but we lived. We journeyed beyond January into the forearms of February of some days of favour and faith, some days of fire and fearsome fates, some days of foreboding fears that had us forget our Father's faithfulness, some of failings and feebleness and others of some fire that fuelled our faith fervently in our faithful friend and Father of fire. 🥰😇😍

Yes, we marched on into March. Oh, how marvelous our miracles made us moan but not without the taunting of monstrous monarch like Pharoah, *Who is that God that I should obey Him?*
Herod, *our heads sought to please the scoffers,* Nebuchadnezzar, “ *Who is that God that shall deliver thee?* Yet Mightily, His mighty matchless mercy manifested magnanimously.

April of apparent “ *many were the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivered him out of them all,* we had.

Then came May of *many maybes* and *just maybes* of men, but we mounted on Messiah magnificent Motte.

In June, we jogged through jungles of jeopardy but Jehovah jolted us forward.

Through July of judgment we joyed in Our justification by our Just Justifier.

In August of anguish, anxiety and ambushment we anchored in our Anvil of war.

We stepped into September of certain *Ember of Sharma's showers* while others shuddered in shambles of shame.

October orbited us in Omega's overwhelming Omnipotence over ominous omens.

A November of no impossibility and nobility we had amidst cries of nagging naughtiness.

And in December, we danced through daunting shadows of death with no dent, damage or dread.

God's faithfulness took us through the year.

*Happy New Year!*

STAY HOME, STAY SAFE

Stay home, stay safe
Death on the streets
Kills quite in brief
Death within home breeks Much more dreads spiff
Men's pounce on men increase
From home to home adrift
Prowling, stalking the unsuspecting breeds
The little left on barns extorting sweeps.

Stay home, stay safe
Survival is a necessity
The fear of death a threatening wave
Close on us, hovering over us in density
Marauding without restrain
Cutting down without pity
Plying our streets unsubdued, uncaged
Striding with suppressed intensity

Stay home, stay safe
The death that will kill, none can tell how gruff
On the streets, it roams loof
At home unforeseen, it pounces tough
We've craved survival swoop
But surviving makes us a rebellious cough
The fang of incarceration, a blessing cool
The walls of prisons a more secured trough
A better security and protection stool

Stay home, stay safe
Men had always moved as game
Men never valued moving all the same
The waking thought of a place to go insane
How blissful? Once a glory availed
Yet a glory unglorified, disdained
To visit, to be visited a gain
Once a privilege unappreciated, gained

Stay home, stay safe
Our rights overtaken and drained
Men out of the streets are taken and tamed
Where to go, a mere wish framed
The complaint, no longer of stress and strain
Not any more of labour and strain
But now the sorrow of boredom and restrain

Stay home, stay safe
Our pots are scraped
Our baskets naked
Our barns unclad
Our tables void
Death, yes, is outside
But is life inside?
Man is a wandering animal
In moving needs are satisfied
Like the caged bird
Death, however, lurk
Stay home, still safe?

Compliment of the season, Teens!

Dear teenager, Happy Independence!
Nations celebrate freedom from external rule but are dominated by wickedness, selfishness and oppression, ravished by poverty, suffering and pain.

Beyond independence, there is a true freedom and that freedom comes from Christ. He redeems and sets free from not just external dominance and oppression but from internal and eternal bo***ge and enslavement.

Find Christ today as we celebrate Nigeria's independence.