BY NYASHADZAISHE RUSHWAYA
After having passed the election week peacefully it just got me thinking if we are blessed or cursed as a country.
I went on to read 2 Samuel 1;21 where I found David cursing in his song after the death of Soul and Jonathan where he said “let there be no dew, nor let there be rain upon you, nor field of offering ….”.
Even though these words were spoken more than 3000 years ago, you can go to the mountains of Gilboa today and there is still no green vegetation on them.
Despite the diligent efforts of the Government that is there today of Israel to replant the forest nothing will grow there all because of the words spoken by David more than 3000 years ago.
But if Zimbabwe was cursed or blessed, where is it written and is Zimbabwe alone or its Africa as a whole?
I failed to get an answer to all those questions which led me do an introspection focusing on myself and other individuals.
The operation of blessings and curses in our lives is neither haphazard nor unpredictable.
On the contrary both of them operate according to eternal, unchanging laws. There are two kinds of forces that shape history which are the invisible and the visible. It is the interplay between these two dimensions that determines the outcome of most events.
Like, if we focus our attention on the things that are visible and natural, we will often be unable to explain why certain things happen the way they do.
Both blessings and curses belong to the invisible, supernatural, spiritual power.
Blessings bring good, positive results while curses produce negative results. Both are words that are changed with supernatural power maybe the power of God, maybe the power of the devil.
But there are words which have an impact on people’s lives and can even determine their destinies not only that their effect can continue from generation to generation.
A curse is any expressed wish that some form of adversity or misfortune will befall or attach to one or more persons a place or an object, in particular it may refer to such a wish or pronouncement made effective by a supernatural power such as a natural force.
Every day we bring children into the world and as parents and elders we let out our anger to the innocent little people and they carry different curses that, will affect the child for the whole of his or her life and it might even continue from generation to generation.
God is the sole and supreme source of all blessings although that they may come to us through many channels.
The first time we see blessings operating in the Bible is in genesis 22 where Abraham had just been willing to offer his son Isaac in response to the Lord’s requirement at the last moment the lord provided a ram to offered instead of Issac.
The cause of curses is exactly the opposite to that of blessings, curses result from not hearing God’s voice and not doing what he says.
This refusal to hear and obey God’s voice can be summed up in one word, which is rebellion not against man, but against God.
Blessings include productiveness, prosperity, victory, God’s favour health. Exaltation and curses include humiliation, barrenness, mental and physical sickness poverty, oppression, family breakdown, defeat.
Salvation is a word that sums up the total work that God desires to do in our lives, in some ways the scope of this work is obscured by various ways the original Greek verb sozo is translated in different parts of the New Testament.
It is normally translated as to save but it is also used in a variety of ways that go beyond the forgiveness of sin.
