REFLECTIONS

Weekender

She was a praying mum

In loving memory of the late Theresa Irugani Asivo

Her children arise and call her blessed. – Proverbs 31:28

By SOLOMON STEPHEN ASIVO Jnr
MY mother went home to heaven at 53 years and six months exactly.
She was born on April 20, 1967. At 4.50am on Oct 21, 2020, she was declared clinically dead at the Madang General Hospital Accidents and Emergency section.
To this day, it is impossible for me to adequately describe her godly life and all that her memory means to me.
She gave me to God before I was born; and as soon as I was able to understand the plan of salvation, she led me to the saviour.
Mother never graduated from college, but she taught me many things I could never have learned in our institutions of higher learning. She never sang in the choir, but at home – where it really counted – her life was a constant song. She was sweet, cheerful and supremely happy in the Lord.

Words of wisdom
My mother told me, “Son, when you grow up and get married, be good to your wife. Tell her often that you love her.”
“Son, don’t ever borrow money – unless you have to. If you want something you can get along without, don’t buy it on credit. Wait until you can pay for it – then buy it.”
She taught me that promises that could not be kept should not be made. In other words, she believed it was better to act without promising than to promise without acting. However, she made an allowance for unforeseen difficulties in this way: “Always try to pay your debts before they are due. But if you find that you owe someone on a certain date and you can’t pay it, walk right up to that person and pay something – even if it’s only a kina or two. Tell him you’re sorry you can’t pay it all – and pay it as soon as you can.”

Words of encouragement
As a little boy, I used to come home from church and “practice” preaching. Pastor Kario Veneo (senior pastor of the Gospel Lighthouse Four Square Church, Madang) used to have a lot of steam in the pulpit, and I secretly wanted to preach just like he did. I’d rig a pulpit of some chairs or a box, and I’d holler and yell and wave my arms. Mother never ridiculed this “preaching.” Rather, she always encouraged me and, in this way, brought me up to be a preacher.
When I left home at the age of 15, Mother made it easy for me to leave as possible. She didn’t allow me to see her weep; she just patted me on the back and said, “God bless you, son. Remember …you belong to Him, and whatever He wants you to do, do it!” Never once did she put any hindrance in my way as I sought to do God’s will to the best of my understanding.
I never saw her much after that – only when I’d come home for brief visits. She heard me preach my first sermon when I was 17. Just to see her in the audience was a tremendous incentive to serve God to the best of my ability.
Words spoken in prayer
I could always count on my mother’s prayers. When I was small, she would take me by the hand and say, “let’s pray.” Then she’d start – and I mean she would pray! Many times I watched the tears stream down her face as she’d intercede for the salvation of her children.
God’s word was precious to her. She loved the Bible. When we presented her with a new one, she gave me her old one with its broken binding, loose covers and well-marked passages.
All the pages are so fingered-
Many were underlined;
Places worn where mother lingered;
Where she left a tear behind
-John Peterson

No, she wasn’t perfect. No human being is. I never heard her swear. She did not read dirty books or magazines. Instead, I heard her pray- I saw her feed on the Scriptures.
She took me to Sunday school and church – and made me sit still! When I got a little fidgety, she’d pinch me just above the knee and twist it at what I thought was a 90 degree angle. That settled me down.
Mother also took me to church on Sunday nights and to the midweek prayer services. And when there were special meetings at the church, we went every night, school or no school, homework or no homework. God and the church were first.

Answered prayer
Once, when I was about eight years old, someone gave me a dime. I felt like a millionaire! On the way home, I dropped my dime, and it rolled into the grass. I started to hunt for it frantically, but Mother said, “Let’s go home and pray about it. Then come down in the morning, and God will help you find your dime.” So we went home and both prayed that I’d find it the next morning. (Wasn’t it nice of her to take such an interest in a little old dime? But that was mother. She taught me to pray about everything.)
Well, the next morning I could hardly wait to go down to the corner and search for my dime. And believe it or not – I found two dimes!
While mother didn’t leave us a lot of worldly goods, she left behind something that all the bulging bank accounts of all the world’s multi-millionaires couldn’t buy – faith in God as taught by a sweet, godly Christian mother.
Thank you mother.

Mum, you have taught and shown me the way to heaven, and when I do get there, I will say this to you:
When I arrive in that heavenly city
Where never comes sorrow or care
I’ll say to my dear, precious mother.
‘It was you who invited me here
To Christ alone be the glory:
He my sins in His body did bear.
Yet to heaven I might not have come
Had you not invited me here. – Anonymous

Love you mum! May your soul rest in eternal peace.

Theresa Irugani Asivo
Place of origin: Bogia, Madang
Family: Eldest of six children
Place of residence: Madang town
Laid to rest: Madang town
Spouse: Stephen Ian Asivo
Children: Vanessa, Sonia, Brendan, Nellie, Solomon, Peter, Faye


Long to walk in glorious light

“Are you only a visitor who has not heard about what happened?” – Picture borrowed.

By ALPHONSE BARIASI
BEING religious and being seen to be so is of little worth, either to impact our surroundings or for our own spiritual vitality. I write from disappointing experience.
Praying was like using a vending machine. Drop in the right coinage and the machine would spit out something desired; a can of Coke, a snack packet, a newspaper, whatever.
But on occasions the machine jammed and the coins were forfeited to it. What a selfish approach to prayer.
We’re either sold out for Yeshua the living Torah or we’re just being religious, living moral lives.
For this argument, I wouldn’t worry too much about the lost soul. I wouldn’t worry about the unbeliever either.
My concern is the religious man who is content with his station in life; the man who is happy with going to church, keeping the commandments and paying tithes and offerings yet does not experience the power of the gospel he believes in.
The lost soul is walking, as it were, in pitch darkness before his radiant morning. And unless he chooses to remain blind to the approaching dawn, it takes just a few moments to go from pitch black darkness to glorious light. “Light!” says the life giver. Such is the miracle of instantaneous salvation.
The man who has had no such experience but is content with his religion is like one walking in perpetual twilight. His sun is mostly gone into the horizon but the afterglow provides some measure of light. He sees by such light and believes all is well so long as he sees his way. Yet he does not see well enough. He can cut his foot on a sharp object, he can slip but still be content with the last bit of light and trudge along.
Yes, the road to blessed eternity forks so many times that we need a guide, no, a friend who’s familiar with every stretch of it.
Our ears tingle at the sounds of popular culture and our hearts are burdened by economic worries around us while the words of the Teacher fade into distant echoes.
It is imperative for us who choose faith in the Teacher to strive to hear the still quiet voice amidst the clatter of the modern world.
The stone at the entrance of the tomb is rolled away and the Messiah comes out radiant as the noonday sun on the twilight of the Sabbath/morning of the first day.
Sometime later, he comes upon this duo who are in deep conversation on their way home.
He asks them about what they are discussing and they are amazed that he is not aware of the momentous events of the past couple of days!
“Are you only a visitor who has not heard about what happened?” they ask.
Then the Living Torah begins expounding on the written Torah and the prophets while accompanying the two to their home. In fact he was revealing himself to them.
And when he acts as if to continue on the journey they dissuade him and invite him instead into their home to spend the night.
Only when he breaks bread do they realise who he is, and he vanishes from before their eyes.
In amazement they ask each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” (Lk 24:32, emphasis added).
We’ve heard the gospel so many times in our time. We’ve heard sermons from the pew, in crusades and on the airwaves.
But here’s the difference. Our hearts made for the Teacher must burn within us when we hear the Torah, the gospel coming out from Zion in all its simplicity and transformative power.
Only when the gospel is preached with the same power that rolled the stone at the entrance to the tomb, only when that same Spirit-power speaks through an audible human voice or by an impression on the heart, will our hearts burn.
Religion is not enough. The wise and contented man of this day and age talks religion and philosophy. The follower of the Teacher yearns only for the truth against which religion and philosophy are weighed.
That is the difference between religion and relationship. To the seeker of Truth nothing else matters except a genuine, personal relationship with the one who said, “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free.”
We must genuinely yearn hearing the one who stands knocking at the door. And when the doors of our hearts are open, we behold the one who said “I am the way, the truth and the life.”
In this season, we celebrate him who also said, “I am the light of the world.” (Jn 8:12). We can walk in that light if we choose to.
Let’s strive for a relationship with the Messiah and never be content with being religious.