Gloria Muliro - Anatenda Lyrics

Video

Anatenda - Gloria Muliro (Skiza *812*792#)

Meaning & Inspiration

The skin on my knuckles is thin now, paper-like and mapped with blue veins that trace every hard year I’ve spent gripping the edge of the pew. When you’re young, you sing about God’s promises like you’re shouting across a canyon, expecting the echo to start an avalanche. But when you’ve buried friends and watched your own strength flicker like a guttering candle, you stop shouting. You just hold on.

Gloria Muliro sings “Mengine nishashuhudia, mengine bado nangojea wakati wa Mungu.” (Some I have witnessed, others I am still waiting for God’s time). That line catches in my throat. It’s honest. It doesn’t pretend that the waiting room is a paradise. It acknowledges that the life of faith is half-memory and half-stare into the dark.

I remember my mother’s old hymnal, the edges soft and frayed. She used to underline verses in Jeremiah 29:11—the part about the thoughts He has for us, thoughts of peace and not of evil. I’ve leaned on those words when my own mind offered nothing but anxiety and shadows. Muliro reminds us that God isn’t just working in the bright, clear moments where the prayers are answered instantly. He is working in the "not yet."

There’s a strange, quiet friction in that waiting. If I’m honest, there are days when the "not yet" feels like a long silence. I look at my hands, resting on my lap, and I wonder if I’ve spent my life waiting for things that haven't shifted yet. But then, there is that refrain: “Aliyatenda jana, anatenda leo, atatenda kesho.”

It’s easy to believe in the God of yesterday. The history of His faithfulness is written on the walls of my life, in the quiet deliverances that only I know about. But trusting Him for tomorrow? That requires a different kind of iron in the blood.

I don’t know if these words are for the young, who think they have all the time in the world to see the promises bloom. For them, maybe it’s just a song. For me, it feels like a tether. When the lights go out in the house at night and the house creaks under the weight of the wind, I don’t need loud music. I need to remember that the One who opened the path yesterday isn't sleeping tonight.

I’m still waiting on a few things. I suspect I might be waiting until the very end. But if the waiting is part of the work—if the waiting is where He shapes the soul into something that can finally hold His peace—then I suppose I can sit here a while longer. The hymn of my life is still being written, and I am learning that the ink is His, not mine. That’s enough for tonight.