Appointed Time

Sweet and permanent is the joy that God gives in

His Appointed time

Lucky are those that wait upon the Lord who makes all things beautiful in

His Time

Laughter-provoking is God’s promise fulfilled in

His Due Time

Like the angel’s message to Sarah, the barren old wife of Grandpa Abraham

That she would mother baby Isaac at

God’s Set Time

Blessed is the child that comes at

 God’s Own Time

Like Prophet Samuel that sprung out of Hannah’s hitherto barren womb

Reliable is a vision from God for it’ll come to pass

In fullness of Time

Great is the victory of God for He will defeat our enemies at

His Definite Time

In the Blind Man’s Shoes

If you were an optician

What would you have done

Had you been in the place of

The blind man whose eyes

The carpenter’s son anointed

 With clay and spittle for a healing?

Were you barren 90-year old Sarah

Or 100-year old Abraham

What would you have told the angel

Announcing news of yet-to-be-born Isaac?

Were you Lazarus’ sister

Would you have believed Jesus’ comfort:

He’s only asleep; he aint dead!

Were you the ceremony chairman At Cana of Galilee

Would you have allowed those pots to be filled with water

When all you wanted was wine – not water?

Trust

You say you have the money

With it I can buy everything, you brag

You put all your trust in all clans of currency

Yet you forget that money has boundaries

Beyond which it becomes useless paper pieces

And won’t buy

Breath

Life

Time.

You say you have read heaps of books

And think you’re wiser than Solomon of old

With knowledge I’ll solve all my life puzzles, you boast

Wait when God turns your wisdom into foolishness

And defies science and medicine and technology

By healing the blind with clay and spittle

By creating a highway on the sea

And walking on water

Tell me wise one

What will you

Say?

Father and mother will rescue me, you say

My friends will if my parents won’t

My spouse is there also

And so are my children

I trust a minister-friend of mine to bail me out.

Friend, the Egyptian Pharoah had fine chariots and riders

And in them he trusted and sought to harm God’s Chosen

To the peril of Egypt’s armed forces

That drowned in the sea of God’s wrath

For cursed is a man that trusts

In fellow man.

Who?

The whistling of wind in adoration

 The gurgling of seas in praise of the Creator

The gentle whispers of tree canopies in worship

The stillness of tree trunks in honour of the Mighty Hand

The calmness of the night and the awe with which it comes

The separation of day and night with just two balls – sun and moon

The stars that pace up like little lamps in the sky, brightening the night

The mystery of human breath and the miracle of our sleeping and waking up

Which officer tells the sun to stop shining bright when evening draws near?

Where does the moon hide during day, what about the sun during night?

Who takes the sun to its store in the night; and where is the sun’s store?

Where does heat escape to during night, what of coldness during day?

It is only He who formed these features with His Hand and Word

That controls them so efficiently with a technology He reserved

For Himself lest man boasts of equality with God – profanity

And denies God the glory and honour and worship only

Deserved by the Almighty to whom every tongue

Is tasked to confess bow and worship and praise

and every knee mandated to bow before Him

In truth and spirit until our adoration

Reaches His throne like

A sweet fragrance.

Biography:

Samuel Kamugisha is a Ugandan journalist, poet and fiction writer. Born 25 years ago in Bushenyi, western Uganda, Kamugisha attended Kashozi Boarding PS, Nyabubare SS and Ishaka Vocational SS. He read Journalism and Communication at Makerere University and won the 2015 TabereMudini Award, sponsored by Monitor Publications, for his academic excellence.

A former journalist with The Observer, Kamugisha is currently an editor at Living Word Publications, a Christian publishing house based in Kampala-Uganda.

Kamugisha’s poetry and prose have been published in Coursework Love: stories and poems from The Hill of The Learned, a collection about university life, and Parousia Magazine.

His two poems, Flying Papers and Priorities were long listed for the 2016 Babishai Niwe Poetry Award.