At war in a time of peace

Many times over the passing weeks
My heart continues to be stabbed by comments from the social media
My fervent trust is in God. He is my hope and my strength
The world is full of anguish and imbalance
Everyone is in grief and despair,
trying to get out his pain pondering his fate
Sympathy and understanding have run out in many homes
The love of prosperity, wealth, development, technology and materialism
have ruined the world of happiness and love
Humanity has violated the universe by its invention.

We ignored God by our actions and words
We told Him that we have had enough of Him
At home, family prayer was gone
Social media became our companion
where God and the reading of the Bible would have united a family
Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook divided families
Social distancing that is being advocated
has been there even before the advent of coronavirus
In the church, people refused to enter,
yet, those who entered interacted with their phones.

Now, peace has eluded us
The whole world is in a shock
The world is turning off
Where do we go from here? is our question.
Prophecies of the past are back to reality
The world economy has shot down
Money has lost its value
Food is of no value
People are running for sanitizers to maintain their health
but the best health is from God.

Today we all wear the mask that hides our cheeks
With thorn and bleeding hearts, we pretend to smile
The world is counting our tears and sighs
We smile but our cries arise from tortured souls
The world has killed the prophets
and ignored the message they brought
What excuse shall we find to justify ourselves?
We have wasted the gifts of nature and ignored God.

Do not misunderstand my thoughts:
We are now at war in a time of peace
We lament of the world when we should be complaining of ourselves
We accuse the world of a sin that is all our own
We are poor in intelligence
We do not listen to one another with a desire to understand
We oppose each other in an unfriendly manner
We are strangers to each other
For fear of shame, we doubt the sincerity of one another
Indeed, pride is the beginning of every evil.

We can set ourselves free if we wish to
Let us acknowledge what God has done for us
Our gaze is upon the sacred wounds of Jesus Christ
Let us run to meet one another with confidence
Let us hold in common our treasures of truth,
Let each offer the little which he owns
Let us enjoy the noble pleasure of perfect union
Let us free ourselves from the slavery of civilisation
Our true home is God. Let us return to Him
Let us accept Him and we will be free from every virus attack.

Prisca Onyinye Nwokorie is a  Roman Catholic Nun. She belongs to the religious order of “Oblates of St. Benedict Joseph Labre” in Italy. She is a graduate of the University of Bari where she obtained her Bachelor's and Masters' degrees in “Information and Communication Technologies for the Production of Software” and “Computer Science” respectively. Currently, she is carrying out research work on “E-learning for Developing Countries”.