Named Before You Were Formed

At a naming ceremony in many Nigerian homes, the elders gather with honey, salt, kola nut, alligator pepper and sugar cane, sometimes with palm oil and water, and touch each one briefly to the baby’s lips while speaking a prayer over the child. May your life be as sweet as this honey. May you add flavour wherever you go, like this salt. May you endure bitterness without losing your character, like this pepper.

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The Village Raises the Child — So Who’s Raising the Village?

We have all heard the proverb so often that it has nearly lost its weight: it takes a village to raise a child. Many African children grew up inside that truth without anyone needing to explain it. An uncle corrected you in the market, a neighbour fed you before your mother came home from work, and an elder disciplined you as freely as your own parents would.

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Wounded Healers: Ministering Out of Your Own Scars

Someone sits across from you, falling apart in the very place you once fell apart: the same grief, the same betrayal or the same diagnosis. As you listen, you find you are not comforting them from a textbook. You know this road because you walked it yourself, limping, and came out on the other side still holding on to God.

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