If you’ve ever been indoctrinated into the thought process that “wokeness” is a new generation concept, trust me, you’ve been played. “Wokeness” has been around since the foundations of the earth; it has only evolved from one form to another from one generation to another.

For the benefit of those who don’t know what “wokeness”, “being woke” or “staying woke” means, let me help you out. “Wokeness” is simply staying in touch with conventionality and popular culture and as basic as that sounds, it could either have grave or pleasant effects. So, if the current popular culture proposes that you should go to church late, staying woke would equate you deciding to go to church late.

That said, let me tell you my short story.

It all started when Abraham and Sarah noticed they were growing old and contrary to the promise of God that Abraham’s seed would be as numerous as the stars in the sky, they had no child to call theirs. I believe that the childlessness wasn’t really the core issue. The main issue was the stigma that came with it. They had probably been “subbed” in the village square a couple of times [the most popular networking site of those days. LOL]. Let’s just call this village square, Twitter. When she wasn’t subbed directly on Twitter, some random person would upload pictures of their children and tag her in it. This only got her more and more depressed.

So, when it seemed like a child wasn’t coming through, Sarah thought the most reliable source for help was to go to Twitter. Truth is she wasn’t wrong. Many had found solutions to their problems on Twitter and hers shouldn’t be a hard nut to crack for the people at the village square. Sorry, Twitter.

You see, Sarah was a verified user on Twitter and that means she couldn’t ask Twitter directly for the solution to her problems because that would mean more jabs and insults from the timeline. She then resorted to the “I’m asking for a friend” format to put forward her question. As usual, her mentions exploded with loads of suggestions and as she scrolled through some of the suggestions in her mentions, her eyes caught one. It was from a celebrity. It looked like a solution was here already. The celebrity had suggested she told her husband to sleep with their maid if they had any.  Her eyes glowed. The number of retweets and likes the tweet had made her hardened about carrying it though. She then devised a plan.

In a few weeks, she had convinced Abraham into sleeping with the maid and the deed had been done. Fast forward to 9 months later and Hagar, the servant girl put to bed. Her son was named Ishmael and everyone lived happily in the home. Then, one day she was scrolling through her timeline and there was an uproar. It was about a particular “men are scum” thread that had gone viral. A particular lady had told a story of how she gave her maid to her husband to be pregnant and how her husband sent her out of the house some 3 months later.

Jealousy sprang up in Sarah and she was cruel to Hagar and Hagar had to leave.

To cut the long story short, Sarah gave birth to her own son. The one we know as the promised seed; Isaac and they all lived happily ever after.

We are all familiar with that story right? Okay. I know. My adaptation was a bit different from the original story but, I bet that would have been the flow if it happened in this era.

Asides the humour, here are a few points that you can derive from my adaptation

• You don’t always have to stay woke. Just be on the right path.
• There’s nothing as sweet as waiting on the promises of God.
• When things don’t seem like it around you, hold fast to what you believe and don’t bend your values
• Lastly, don’t lose hope! God will come through for you

To read more on this story, read up the book of Genesis 16 – 21.

As we close today’s service again, don’t forget to give a “hi-five” to five people around you and more importantly, drop your tithes and offerings in the basket before you leave. LOL.