I hope you enjoyed yourself writing posts on your blog this year? If yes, then consider the subject question as part of the review of your blogging activities for the outgoing calender year.
Looking back now, which one of your posts written in 2019 would you consider your most favourite?
As he rightly pointed out in his short post, your favourite post for the year doesn’t necessarily mean the most popular post on your blog. But rather, the one you really like yourself or you enjoyed writing most or that challenged you or inspired you the most – whether or not it gathered many views, likes and comments.
For me, I think my favourite post for 2019 will be one of my midyear posts entitled The problem of atheists finally figured out. It was the second post I published after I carefully studied one of the hottest interactions between Jesus and some of the pretentious religious leaders of the day – the Pharisees.
In a way, I came to realise that there is a similarity between the attitude of the then Pharisees and the modern day atheists, especially the ones online.
As someone who frequently engages in online conversations with atheists visiting this blog, I have often wondered why most of them say the (foolish) things they say about God and the notion of His existence.
“Why can’t they just get it?” I have often asked under my breath.
However my bewilderment got relieved when I heard Jesus vehemently point out the mistakes of the Pharisees as recorded in the Gospels: “Your mistake is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God” – Matthew 22:29 (emphasis mine).
Those words were an eye-opener for me because I could surmise that atheists have the same problems too; they neither understand the scriptures nor know the power of God.
My second most favourite post for the year
Let me also use this medium to talk about my second most favourite post for the outgoing year. The post was inspired by my study of the book of Malachi in the course of 2019.
In the Two Antidotes To Divorce Hidden Away in Malachi, I talked about the fact God intends for our marriages to be a lifelong union. And that to prevent divorce, we must guard our hearts against it and be faithful to our spouses. That’s so simple yet many people miss it. How sad!
You can check out the two posts and let me know what you think.
Recall that when I posted my review of Ufuomaee’s The House Girl, I promised you that I would also read and review some other books by the same author. This post will be my fulfillment of that promise and I am glad to do it pro bono.
Some months have passed since I’ve completed reading the Perfect Love from cover to cover. I know I should have done the review earlier than now but after several weeks of doing the reviewing in my head, I have decided to put pen to paper. So please spare me some minutes from your precious time as I share my thoughts about the book.
About the book
Perfect Love is about the travails of Onome who has been unhappily married to her husband Temi for six years. Just before their sixth wedding anniversary, Onome meets her ex-boy friend and this turns her world upside down and she became “…a wandering heart. A restless heart. A troubled heart.”
Did Onome fall into the temptations that ensued? Did her husband find out about the other man? Was their marriage consumed by the lack of love and commitment in the relationship? Was she as committed to the marriage as she was to her writing career? It will be worth your time to find out the answers to these questions and more by reading the book.
Ufuoma, Author of Perfect Love
The book is written by the brainy Ofuomaee, blogger at Grace & Truth, social entrepreneur and author of multiple christian fiction books. In the Perfect Love, the author continues in her now well established style of teaching valuable christian-living lessons via fictional stories that readers find largely believable and relatable.
The only departure from the author’s usual style is that instead of her being the one telling the stories and unfolding the narratives, she allowed each character in the book to do so by themselves. In a way, that also gives the reader a special experience while devouring the book.
The journaling style the author employed in writing the book gave me a breath of fresh air while reading it – a different style of presentation from anything I’ve read recently. As I noted earlier, the author allowed the characters to tell their stories by themselves and in their own words – what they did, could have done, thought about etc.
My worst and favourite character
If I were to pick out my worst character in Perfect Love, it would have to be no other person than Onome herself. Granted that she was very a brilliant and likable person, she continued to make choices that left much to be desired.
It was very annoying to me that she professed to be a born again Christian but had little or no commitment to living up to that sublime identity. And this contributed to her being entangled in the avoidable web of marital frustrations and unhappiness that she was enmeshed in.
My take is that she was, to a greater part, the architect of her own marital misfortunes. In one moment of reflection, she hit the nail on the head when she admitted, “I think our foundation was all wrong, we’d never taken the time to correct it. Yes, we both believed in God [but] He wasn’t Lord of our hearts, our marriage [and] our home.”
Most of the things she went through could have been avoided had she been truly committed to her profession of being a child of God. But then I have realised that, in many ways, Onome is not different from many of us who claim to be christians; we acknowledged God as our Saviour but we hardly let Him be the Lord of our lives.
And we claim we know God but we live our lives like we don’t know Him. What ever happened to the injunction of Jesus to us in Matthew 5:16,
“… let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”?
Enough of Onome’s spiritual and emotional immaturity! I believe we all have some serious soul-searching to do. The earlier we get started the better.
If we must claim to have a relationship with God, let it show in our words and in our actions. Otherwise, we will not be able to escape the consequences of a hypocritical lifestyle.
On the other hand, I would pick the marriage counselor as my favorite character in the book. Her uncommon wisdom, christian maturity and honour shined through her counselling room. I saw her as a good ambassador of God and her profession.
I would assure you that you would pick one or two wisdom from the lips of that impressive marriage counselor when you read the book. As she says in one instant, “When you change your priories and give more time to things that matter, your life will be better for it.”
And who doesn’t want a better life?
Conclusions
I think Ufuomaee did a great job in the Perfect Love, addressing such familiar but important issues as communication in marriage, dealing with infidelity, divorce, marriage counselling, forgiveness, and so on. Although the book centres mainly on marriage and family affairs, I have no doubt that both married and unmarried people will find it helpful.
I definitely had my moments of both sobriety and thrill as I rummaged the pages of Perfect Love. And I believe I have many reasons to thank Ufuomaee for yet another good contribution to the genre of christian fiction.
Thank you for reading!
You can share your own thoughts in the comment section.
Victors Corner Blog 