Prepare the way for the Lord.
Prepare the way of the Lord,
and all people will see the salvation of our God.
This song is one of Taize's song that composed by Jacques Berthier (1923-1994). It reminds me about the anticipation for the second coming of God. On this 2nd week of Advent, many believers have prepared themselves for Christmas and so do I ^^.
This season of Advent helps me personally to meditate more about God's blessing on one past year that I have been through. It encourages me to know more about God's will in my life, my ministry and my future.
Today I have recalled my study on the global worship class taught by Dr Lim Swee Hong. He taught us about the various pictures of Nativity story in the world. I wanna share one of the interesting article about them.
Pictures of the Nativity Story in Africa (‘Jesus Mafa’)
In the 1970s Mafa Christians in North Cameroun wanted to have pictures of the Gospel using their own cultural resonances. With the help of French missionaries they acted out the scenes, and sketches of the plays were worked up by French artists and given back to them – and to the world. More than 6 million copies have been distributed to date to 83 countries.
Here are some of the Christmas story pictures …
Nativity
African Madonna 1
To people living outside of West Africa, the pictures may appear “quaint” or “exotic.” But among the ethnic group my family was living with, the pictures resonated deeply, since a lot of things in the pictures looked somewhat familiar. That enabled people to focus on the biblical story being represented in the pictures.
I met so many non-Christian Africans who said, “Those Bible stories happened long ago and far away and have nothing to do with me.” But when shown some of the 60+ pictures, that excuse doesn’t hold up anymore. Now you can see what it would look like if Jesus was in an African village and telling his parables, healing the sick, confronting the authorities… becoming Incarnate within a certain cultural framework.
What would it feel like if you were a rural African, and learned that Almighty God was incarnated into your world?
African Madonna 2
Here’s a short essay by a leader in Cameroon associated with Jesus Mafa:
Why an African Christ?
“It is urgent and necessary for us to proclaim and to express the message, the life and the whole person of Jesus Christ in an african artistic language, in our language which is the expression of our daily life, of our culture. Many people of different cultures have done it before us and will do it in the future, without betraying the historical Christ, from whom all authentic christianity arises. We must not restrict ouselves to the historical and cultural forms of a particular people or period. The creation of a black Christ in Africa does not diminish at all the historical Christ, on the contrary, it enriches the universal meaning of the message of God. This God who became one of us in order to proclaim Christ as the Lord of all nations of the world, through all their authentic riches: their languages, their gestures, their art, their whole life and culture. Evangelization means to give the message of the historical and eternal Christ to all nations, following the apostles who made themselves Jews with the Jews, Greeks with the Greeks, similar to their Master who identified himself with every weak and persecuted human being when he said to Saul the persecutor: ” Saul, why do you persecute me ? ” Doesn’t this daring and unspeakable identification go far beyond what we are trying to express by these pictures ? It shows not only their legitimacy but their necessity.”
This article wrote by:
- P. Pondy, School Director in Yaounde, Cameroon
Taken from http://www.jesusmafa.com/anglais/accueil.htm
** A Black Madonna or Black Virgin is a statue or painting of the Virgin Mary in which the Virgin Mary is black. The term was especially applied to those created in Europe in the medieval period or earlier. "Black Madonna" does apply to images of the Virgin Mary portrayed as explicitly black African, a type of image popular in Africa and areas with large black populations, such as Brazil and the United States.
** A Black Madonna or Black Virgin is a statue or painting of the Virgin Mary in which the Virgin Mary is black. The term was especially applied to those created in Europe in the medieval period or earlier. "Black Madonna" does apply to images of the Virgin Mary portrayed as explicitly black African, a type of image popular in Africa and areas with large black populations, such as Brazil and the United States.
(source: wikipedia)
