From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste in images
SATURDAY, JANUARY 12, 2013
Yesterday I spent much of my time in Kisumu City with one of my colleagues in Justice and Peace field. Mr Tom (not his real name) had longed to become a priest but could not make it because the Rector was not in good terms with Teso seminarians. He dismissed them all. He used to call them Punda (donkey). Any of them without rosary in his pocket was automatically dismissed.
When I told him that the said Rector who has since being made one of the highest church authorities has a Teso whom he taught in the same seminary and now he is not only a priest but his great friend and serves as his Diocesan Education Secretary.
Tom was quick to react that he knows the priest and that he was one of his colleagues, dismissed but joined a missionary congregation, and that now he is using him, not only because he is interested in education and has built one of the best academies in the diocese but also he is a source of income for him.
When I asked him why he brought this topic and yet now he is working with one of the internationally recognized NGO’s, he said he is still bitter with him and felt rejected. When I shared with him my own story that I was also once rejected in one particular diocese when the bishop heard that I was the one coming to talk to his Christians, when it was only remaining one week to go, Tom was still bitter.
I even tried to tell him that he was not the first to be rejected but even Jesus was. And when his disciples told him that in some houses they were rejected and were very bitter, Jesus told them that try to go to other houses and where you are welcome say peace to this house and where you are rejected even the dust in your shoes shake them and leave them there and they will serve as a curse for that house.
Jesus was rejected because he failed, in their eyes, to do what the Jews expected their Messiah to do—destroy evil and all their enemies and establish an eternal kingdom with Israel as the preeminent nation in the world.
The prophecies in Isaiah and Psalm 22 describe a suffering Messiah who would be persecuted and killed, but the Jews chose to focus instead on those prophecies that discuss his glorious victories, not his crucifixion.
The good news is that many Jews are turning to Christ today. The God of Israel has always been faithful to keep a “remnant” of believing Jews to himself. In the United States alone, some estimates say that there are over 100,000 Jewish believers in Jesus, and the numbers are growing all the time.
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
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Twitter-@8000accomole
Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.
-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ UN Disarmament Conference, 2002