2025 great expectations

Every New Year is seen as an opportunity for a new beginning and the closing of an old chapter. A great many long for a turning around in their fortune and those with health challenges are filled with hope for a new season. To reinforce their prayerful thoughts with those of others and the supplication by the clerics, prayer houses, particularly the churches are filled to the brim. The cross-over night is one of the three celebrations multitudes that throng the churches.

The other occasions are Christmas Festival of which cross-over night is seen largely as an extension and Easter period, a period that encompasses Palm Sunday. Soulful prayers with eyes closed, loud supplications depicting agitated souls seeking connection with the Throne of Grace are regular features. But then drumming, percussion, cymbals and all, and dancing take over in supposedly consecrated domes. Drumming and dancing are regarded as part of worship, indeed as an expression of gratitude to the Most High.

While celebrations go on apace, many a self-proclaimed prophet arises to warn and admonish and predict what the future has in store in different communities and for individuals, usually eminent personalities mostly in public gaze. I recall one such prophet predicted about five years ago the death of Pastor Adejare Adeboye. A year or so before then one had predicted the passing away of Professor Wole Soyinka. Gloriously, WS celebrated his 90th birthday in July 2024. Although the prophet who spoke of the then impending exit of Pastor Adeboye from earthly life did not mention his name, there was no mistaking it from description, his abode and field of activities that he was referring to him.

Herbert Vollmann states in his treasure work, A Gate Opens: “The intuitive perception is part of our conscience. It knows exactly what is good and what is evil. Its warning or assenting voice cannot be missed if man wishes to hear it. Vollmann then quoting Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835) as saying: “Everyone must be a judge unto himself, and indeed is so. For whenever anything deserves disapproval, the inner voice states this more loudly and hurtfully than outside criticism could ever do.”

In other words, each person if he pays close attention to himself can predict where his path will lead him here and in here after. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has been strenuously trying to lift our spirits with assurances that 2025 will be better than 2024. Nigerians were battered in 2024 as consequences of his policy pronouncements threw a majority of Nigerians evidently into misery. He says in his New Year message: “As the New Year dawns, it brings many hopes, aspirations, and prospects for better days. By the Grace of God, 2025 will be a year of great promise in which we will fulfil our collective hopes.

“Though 2024 posed numerous challenges to our citizens and households, I am confident that the New Year will bring better days. Economic indicators point to a positive and encouraging outlook for our nation. Fuel prices have gradually decreased, and we recorded foreign trade surplus in three consecutive quarters.

“Foreign reserves have risen, and the Naira has strengthened against the U.S. dollar, bringing greater stability. The stock market’s growth has generated trillions of Naira in wealth, and the surge in foreign investment reflects renewed confidence in our economy.”

Tinubu acknowledges the challenges of food crisis and paucity of drugs to heal ailing bodies. He spoke of efforts to ameliorate the situation. “In 2025”, he says “our government is committed to intensifying efforts to lower these costs by boosting food production and promoting local manufacturing of essential drugs and other medical supplies. We are resolute in our ambition to reduce inflation from its current high of 34.6% to 15%.” He capped his hope by saying “With diligent work and God’s help, we will achieve this goal and provide relief to all our people.”

This is undoubtedly a confident posture and positive thinking. And it reminds one of Dr. Norman Vincent Peale work, The Amazing Results of Positive Thinking. A lady wrote to Dr. Peale: “I must admit, Dr. Peale, that at first I thought your ides were a little extreme. Imagine adding a tablespoon of love to a recipe, sweeping out negative thoughts, sprinkling clothes with affection! But frankly things were so bad around here and I was feeling so miserable that I decided to try your ideas anyway, queer as they seemed. All I can say is, it’s amazing how they did work!”

Our world, as this column has had to say several times, is governed by laws. They are the mechanisms the Almighty Creator uses to govern His Creation. Since thinking is a seed, in the outworking of the Law of Sowing and Reaping, pure, positive thinking unceasingly nourished is bound to produce positive result, for as the seed, so the fruit. Tinubu has provided the template for his compatriots. We must work on ourselves, our character as the state of the development of our inner being that will be decisive on the expectation of the Year 2025.

If I may refer to Herbert Vollmann again: “Every moment man gives cause for fateful consequences in the future, and every moment he stands in the reactions of previous decisions from the present and from past earth-lives. Thus men living on earth today must also be answerable to themselves for what they willed and thought in former earth-lives. In this connection it matters not whether the volition was general or directed at definite other human beings. This should exhort us to act with caution, and heighten our sense of responsibility, so that in the future, whether on earth or in the beyond, evil reactions that darken and make our lives painful will no longer be possible.”

In other words, if we do not begin to change by first seeking spiritual knowledge on what genuine change entails it may so happen that 2025 will be worse than 2024. Was 2024 not worse than 2023 or was 2023 not a decline from 2022 and so on down the years such that we longed for Buhari’s years should over quickly? On 31 December 2023, the churches were overfilled by worshippers who believed that 2023 was responsible for all their woes. Therefore, they entreated the incoming 2024 to be their friend and fortune bearer. They had forgotten that as 2022 was taken its bow, they cursed and abused it, and entreated the incoming 2023 to be their friend and fortune bearer. Two laws will decide whether we would have a beautiful or an ugly 2025. The out working of these laws in their effects on our lives through our misconduct or misbehaviour cannot be mitigated or abolished by cross-over night activities. These are the laws of Homogeneity and the Law of Reciprocal action.

If we critically observe our environment, including our fellowmen, we would observe the Law of Attraction of Homogeneous Species at work in our universe and in our fate, that is, the conditions of our existence. The cells of the tongue are homogeneous and are different from those of the brain, eyes, skin, liver, or bones. In forests, animals live in homogeneous communities, lions among lions, elephants among elephants etc. In the seas and oceans whales do not live with catfish or tilapia.

Regarding whether 2025 will be a beautiful or ugly year for us the secret lies in what we have said, what we have thought and are thinking. They are origins of what proceeds from our tongues and hands. The prayers we say in worship houses can constitute wasted energy if they lack the power to bear them aloft to the footstool of the Throne of Grace. The spoken words merely form channels or path ways for our spiritual intuitive perception which is living energy. The real prayer is what comes out of our thoughts. There are two kinds of thought, namely intuitive thought volition and intellectual thought volition. Intuitive thought comes from the spirit while intellectual thought volition comes from the intellect that has its seat in the cerebrum, the frontal brain.