PHANTOM- A voice

I woke up from this half-patched raffia mat, carefully spread across the 10*12m room in which I lay. This room had mud walls enclosing its inner parts, with the lizard in the corner and the wall gecko as my only roommates. I could feel that my flesh had been enslaved by the raffia. The evidence was thick contours, drawn across melanin covered sheet of clay that like blankets in the cold rainy season covered the things that I call bones, or rather biology calls bones. To be real with you, I felt I had slept in a pile of stones. The silhouette of the moon carefully outlined on the frame of my window told me it was still hours before morning. A thought then occurred to me. Waking up this early was so unusual. I turned my medium sized skull screwed without screws on a handsome neck on its axis to the left. I caught sight of my regular night visitor, a mouse, eating away at my bag of corn. I was sure it was avenging the death of its uncle a night before. As I picked up the wooden ladle to dole out a similar fate, I heard the sound.

It was the voice of an angel in heaven ministering a solo to the King of Kings. Well, that was what I thought when I heard the sweet baritone sound of the rooster expertly exercising its vocal cord, it never missed a note. I don’t know why I did this, neither would I have advised anyone to, but I took my kerosene lantern, carefully untied the huge ropes that had been hooked to a nail at the other end of the door caging me in. Walking out of the room, I felt my feet cold. Thumping on the wet mixture of soil and grass, but I was bold. The mist had fallen, the weather chilly, nothing to help only my hands to fold. There was not even a star in the skies to behold. I looked out, ears propped, in search of the source of the KOKROOKOO. I saw NOTHING! ZERO! ZILCH!

I was disappointed. My PHANTOM Rooster.


For many of us, the crows of the morning rooster is a refreshing sound to hear. A signal of a new day, new opportunity, a grand opening. A gift delivered fresh on first class mail. A reminder of the goodness of our Lord who never fails. But wait a minute.

Could this same sound remind you and me about something else? About a mystery rooster whose owner is yet unknown. Whose sound brought the eyes of the Messiah gazing into those eyes of ‘he who would cut an ear for The Lord’ as if to tell him, ‘I told you Peter, you never really loved me’. The cock which caused the rock on which the King of Kings would establish His church to weep.

Matthew 26:33; Peter spoke up and said unto Jesus, “I will never leave you, even though all the rest may”. 

 I could just imagine went through Peter’s mind when it played a flashback of those words he carefully and proudly uttered to the Lord. The feeling of guilt, regret and despair as he instinctively wept. He had denied the savior. Our Savior.

 For many people, this is just another script of our lives, acted daily. We are masked Peters, wonderfully costumed in our everyday lives without guilt, shame, regret or even knowing it. The question I am trying to ask is, “How many times have you already denied Jesus?” When you woke up this morning without a word of prayer to your Lord as if to tell Him, ‘You can go to hell, I would have woken up anyway.’ When you cannot hold your Bible to church because ‘the folks on that block will know where I’m heading towards and that’s not cool’. Really? Since when did Christ’s public ridicule and death become a private inheritance to keep from prying eyes? You also won’t mention Christ’s name in any conversation with your boys-boys or girls-girls because John isn’t your middle name. You are struggling to fit in when you were created in His own image to stand out? After all this church service, bible study and rehearsals, are you a living epistle or a living apology to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

Isn’t it enough living this Christian life as a Seasonal movie? We care so much about this world that in a Flash like Berry, our spiritual Suits are pierced by an Arrow and we are no more the Originals that God made to inherit His Empire. Our life story only worth to be written in a Vampires Dairy!

So after 787 words, what am I trying to say?

Peter found it so difficult to deny Jesus because his actions, speech, dressing and demeanor depicted that he had been with Jesus. How easy is it for you and me to deny Jesus? How easy is it for the people around us to accept that we are just nominal Christians?


 Like Peter, has your rooster crowed yet?