Category: Inspirational

Substance Over Style

Let’s start from the scratch: The noise that a hollow container would make is definitely much more than the sound that would be made when a half-filled (or half-empty, depending on how you see it) container is struck. The rule is – The fuller the container, the deeper the sound and the lower the volume of the sound made. Apparently, this was what the observation of the English folk, when they came up with, ‘Empty barrels make the most noise’

Let’s go a little bit deeper now: The noise that the hollow container makes would also be quite similar to the noise that a fancy coloured container would make, so far as it is still empty. Though the amount of noise that would emanate from the empty container is dependent on the material from which the container is made, it is nevertheless also still relative to the fact that the container is empty.

Still hang in there. Now, the sound that would be made by a fully filled container would be dependent on the type of material that is used to fill up the container. For example, the sound made by a container filled with gravel would be different from the sound that is made by a container filled with engine oil.

Eventually, whatever that is within you would count!

If you’ve managed to come this far in this particular post, you might be wondering about what I’m talking about. I’m actually asking a couple of questions.
What do you have within you?
What do people see in you when the stakes are down?
Who is the ‘real you’ that people don’t know of?
I’m asking, ‘Is there an ‘animal’ within you that comes out when the pressure is on?’

And talking about pressure. Pressure is that phenomenon that allows people to see what you’ve got inside you. Whether you are just an empty vessel filled with HOT AIR. Empty within, yet on the outside, people see a well decorated, courteous container. Who do you think you are fooling? It’s high time you underwent a ‘self check-up’.

And for those who are glad that they’ve got something within, what exactly do you have within you? HARD STONES to pelt at people around you, and even yourself. Or FINE SAWDUST to sprinkle into the eyes of those who are watching you. Or maybe it is COOL WATER or better still a GRACEFUL PUNCH of VARIOUS EXOTIC FRUIT JUICES that people can’t just get enough of, even in the face of pressure! Yes, even when you are going through your own challenges, you are still capable of refreshing others.

This post was not written with anybody in mind. It is meant for everyone, including myself. I think it is high time we all examined ourselves to find out whether or not we can stand the FIRE OF TESTS AND TRIALS as it comes. And WHEN it comes, would we be happy with whatever we find within ourselves???

God Is My Brother.

This is going to be a very short and laconic one. Okay, now that is settled, can we move on to today’s issue?

For reasons I’m not too sure of, many people think that what I right here resemble sermons and consequently that makes me a pastor, or something. I really don’t understand that sentiment. I made it quite clear in my first post on this blog that I would be writing on various issues from my heart and mind’s perspective.

Pardon my sense of continuity but I had to settle that, because today’s issue might look as if I’m preaching. But I’m not. Okay, I was doing something quite random yesterday and a name was impressed on my heart. Ahijah. Now, I’m quite familiar with that name. I scanned through the recesses of my mind and I remembered that in the Bible, this was the prophet that told a man called Jeroboam, that he (Jeroboam) was eventually going to rule over ten out twelve Israel tribes. Then, an impression was made in my mind. The meaning of Ahijah. For those that do not know, in Biblical times, the interpretation of an individual’s name went a long way in determining his character. For example, Simon (Peter) means ‘reed’, a very weak, easily swayed plant. This was evident in his unstable character during Jesus’ Earthly ministry.

The name Ahijah, means ‘God is my Brother’. Isn’t that awesome. I made another mental scan to find out other individuals who made this seemingly ‘boastful’ claim in the Old testament (in the New testament, Jesus called the doers of His Words, His brothers; Paul also called us joint-heirs with Christ). Father Abraham was called the friend of God, the Great David qualified to be a man after God’s heart. But Ahijah. He called God his Brother.

To me, I am fully convinced that the man Ahijah didn’t just bear the name for the fun of it. No. He was an embodiment of the name both in character and in deeds. How many of us would take a new suit and tear it into pieces, just to explain God’s point to somebody. This guy’s relationship with God was so tight. Even when the man Ahijah was so old and blind, he could not be deceived by the very same test that Isaac failed miserably. I really can’t tell you all you have to know about this man Ahijah. Maybe in your free time, you should check 1 Kings 11 & 14.

I didn’t plan for this article to be this long, but I won’t be satisfied if I didn’t say this: I’m not asking you to change your name to Ahijah so that your character would be like his. Afterall, Jabez, who probably had the worst name anybody could dream to have, didn’t change his name before God changed his story. What I’m really concerned about is how we all get our relationship with God to be so tight that we can boldly unequivocally call God our brother too.

God is yearning for people to have a deep, real-life family-like relationship with Him. But apparently, many people are afraid to draw near to God because of what He might tell them to do. Always remember this: God loves you and He has your best interest in mind. Why not draw nearer to Him, so He’d do the same with you?

Selah!

Words Onwards

Confusion, fear and all its adherent complications all start from that small seed that we all tend to forget exists – a word. Peace of mind, sense of joy, happiness and fulfilment also spring from the self-same, almost negligible source – a word. The baffling issue, however, is why do we see more of the former around us than the latter, if they both are from the same origin. The reason is not far-fetched: We fail to recognize the tremendous amount of power that is latently existent in a word.

You see, a word is capable of triggering an idea which in turn provides a reference point for our emotions and thoughts which would invariably govern our actions. The power of a word, whether spoken or written, is more or less like a dynamite – use it wisely and you might get some form of natural resources from a rock, or use it wrongly and you might just inflict injuries on yourself and others around you.

Now, if a word is as a see, there’s nothing more qualified to serve as the fertile ground than our minds. The mind is unique in that it processes information only in the form of pictures. This is why you would enjoy reading a novel more than watching the movie adaptation of the same movie. Furthermore, we know that when someone speaks to us, the words we hear are not seen or perceived as letters in our minds but as pictures too.

Pay attention now, I’m heading somewhere: If what we read and what we hear are seen by our minds’ eyes as pictures, then our thoughts and emotions are more or less the products of what we see or hear, and what we say or write is simply an expression of our thoughts and emotions which would invariably govern our actions.

So what am I saying? In order to possess that sense of peace, joy, happiness and fulfilment within and around you, you have to choose to make words work for you. For example, if you keep on reading positively edifying literature, over time, you’d see desirable changes in your thoughts, emotions and actions. Conversely, if you keep on giving your mind non-edifying material to consume, there’s no chance of you not having deteriorations in your thoughts, emotions and actions. The same applies to the spoken words. Definitely, you do not have a choice in determining what you hear but you can choose whatever you listem to. So selectively choose wisely. You could also speak out positivity continuously into your own hearing and with time, you would only be wishing that you had started the practice earlier.

Words are the sources of the ideas that could make you or mar you. Make words work for you as you push onwards in life.

Selah

Eleven days after and my roomie still not helping matters,
Like clockwork that ticks and talks,
He counted every minute, but never did quite reach the hour,
Was bored by my bed, yet the loquacious bore,
Unforgivingly into me he bore,
But by Divine Providence, I was soon to be freed,
Drunken with euphoria, that which only peace can bring,
I drifted, ever slowly, into the treasure island of thoughts

Why are swayed and tossed to and fro,
By all that we let life throw at us,
With ourselves we struggle by ourselves, Hoping
To outdo ourselves in catching up with ourselves,
In a vicious cycle, satisfaction evades all, so search for more,
It’s a frantic race, and we are lost within it,
Then, we find ourselves, worrying,
Fittingly that we have nothing to worry about.

But have we considered ‘SELAH’?
Taking a break….to stop, think and meditate,
Stepping out of the frenzied rat race,
Pausing everything and playing it all in slow motion,
Stopping and searching for the security
Of that hidden treasure – the rivers of peace
Breaking forth from within and sweeping you off your feet,
Ah! Serenity and Tranquility.

Selah

SOS, Songs of Solomon in the Bible?!!

Let’s picture this scenario in our minds’ eye: You pick up your Bible, flip through the pages and then your eyes happen to fall on the this short book of the Old testament. You start reading the 1st Chapter and before you finish the second verse, you see it. You shout ‘Yikes!’ in your mind and you might start wondering out aloud what a book like this is doing in the Word of God. You decide to give yourself a benefit of a doubt and continue the Bible passage. At the end of the entire book, you are awestruck, dumbfounded and spellbound…. And you ask yourself: ‘WHAT IS SONGS OF SOLOMON DOING IN THE BIBLE?’

I’m not a pastor, neither am I so much of a Bible scholar, but I have come across articles that have tried to explain why Songs of Solomon is found in the Bible. Of all the reasons I saw, the ones I felt were most plausible were:
1. God is interested in all facets of our human existence, even up to the love lives of married Christian couples.
2. It is a shadow of the type of love that Christ has for His Church.

However, in my relatively short Christian life, I’ve come to understand that when one’s dealing with God, or His Word (the Bible), one must avoid stereotypes. When dealing with God, or His Word, you have to be ready to drop any religious prejudices, sentiments and personal beliefs and just depend on the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

Now, the vivid picture I painted in the 1st paragraph was quite similar to my exact feelings when I first came across Songs of Solomon (funny, eh?). I was amused, bemused, ‘ceemused and demused’. But when I dropped my own human thoughts and decided to depend on the Holy Spirit for interpretation, I found ‘platinum’ NUGGETS that were even totally unrelated to love or something of such. The interpretation was so applicable to present day situation. Now, that’s sublime! What’s more, I’m going to share what I saw with you. Huzzah, right?

Well, if you were patient enough the first time you read Songs of Solomon, and you were able to get to the 4th Chapter and the 12th, 15th and 16th verses, you’d come across something poetic as follows:
‘A garden is inclosed in my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed…..
A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon.
Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out…..’

The 1st portion of the passage above shows a case of untapped potentials, a case of what COULD have been but is NOT, a case of unseen glory in an individual. Notice the phrases, ‘a garden inclosed’, ‘a spring shut up’, ‘a fountain sealed’. Can’t you see the sadness and pity oozing out of those words? ‘A garden inclosed’ could imply that the potential available in an individual that the individual has failed to tap into as a result of ignorance. Every person has a hidden treasure embedded within him or her. It would be the highest form of selfishness to deprive humanity of that treasure in you, just because of ignorance! Well, as the Greeks would say, ‘Gnosthiseauthon!’ which means, ‘Search yourself!’. The other phrases in the first portion of the passage, ‘a spring shut up’ and ‘a fountain sealed’ typifies the case of individuals who were initially on the road to maximizing potential but as a result of one mistake or the other (usually sin or delving out of one’s purpose) they become stagnated and are unable to maximize their full potential. All isn’t lost, however.

Now take a look at the life and excitement found in these phrases fron the 2nd portion of the passage: ‘a fountain of gardens’, ‘a well of living waters’, ‘streams from Lebanon’. See the joy and almost touchable happiness that is leaping from each word of these phrases. This is a vivid picture of fulfiled purpose and maximized potential. Also note the God’s ultimate plan for you: OVERFLOW TO IMPART OTHERS. Would a fountain of gardens be meant for just one person to eat all on his own? Or would a well of living waters be used by just one person? No! No!! No!!! Your maximization of potential is meant to lead to an overflow in your life that would impart sporadic impacts in the lives of all you come in contact with. This is the joy of it all- Nurturing others to tread the paths you tread to attain potential.

Finally, in the last portion of the passage, there’s a kind of climax to all the build up of the previous portions of the passage. ‘Awake O North wind……blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out’. This is the work of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, just knowing what to do isn’t enough. Knowing that you have to give yourself to others without having any fears of losing in the ‘competition’ can only come via the extra nudge from the Holy Spirit. Once that extra force is there, there is the facilitation of events that would leave one with no choice but to joyfully impart lives.

So, do you still have any reservations about Songs of Solomon (SOS)? I didn’t think so too…..

Waiting for the good weather.

A couple of hours ago, I was lying down on my bed in my room at the topmost floor of Block D, Sultan Bello hall in the University of Ibadan. The weather was cold and chilly and I was trying to get some sleep but couldn’t, so my mind drifted back, floating in the recesses of my memory to a time when I was a young lad. I was wearing the blue and white stripes of my primary school uniform. I looked ahead and i saw a fair-skinned young man who happened to be the school’s newly recruited music teacher. He was teaching us something about the aesthetic values of music before he stopped abruptly and told us that he wanted to teach us a song. Up till this present moment, I still cannot fathom the circumstances that made him teach us this song. But what I do know is that, over a decade on, that song still plays itself over and over in my subconscious and has an impact on me one way or the other. The song went thus:
‘Whatever you can do today,
Don’t leave it for tomorrow,
Whatever you can do today,
Don’t leave it for tomorrow.
For tomorrow has it’s own problems,
And they would surely come.
Whatever you can do today,
Don’t leave it for tomorrow’

The reason why my primary school music teacher might have sang the aforementioned song might have been in order to curb laziness and procrastination in his young proteges. To think in this direction is very much proper and even plausible. But in my little experience in life, I’ve come to understand that the factors that militate against doing what is expected of you, when it’s expected of you is much more grave than Procrastination and Laziness. Oh yes, these two play their parts in not getting things done….and yes, they are the most important reasons why we don’t get things done. But how could we ever forget about the syndrome called, ‘WAITING FOR THE GOOD WEATHER’!

We are all guilty of ‘waiting for the good weather’. For some, this syndrome is mild, while for others it’s moderate while for some others still, it’s so severe and deeply ingrained into such individuals that they don’t even know that they are sufferers of the syndrome. ‘Waiting for the good weather’ is characterized by the desire and willingness to have all variables swinging in one’s favour before one decides to make any move in getting things done. The truth remains that no matter how much we want an ideal world similar to our worldview of how things should be, there is nothing that’s going to change the way things are-the real world-except we make moves NOW to create our ideal world. Many of us know what we do, in actions and thoughts, that typifies the syndrome of ‘waiting for the good weather’, so I’m not going to spend any more time on that. However, I have some recommendations that could be helpful for us in our bid to break away from the syndrome of ‘waiting for the good weather’. My recommendations are:

1. Don’t be afraid of trying new things. This might be difficult when all the resources you need are not in place. But you just have to start the new thing first. Remember, ‘To begin a task is to have half completed it’
2. Challenge yourself. You want success, don’t you? If yes, the fact that you want success in a task should provide enough drive for you to prevent you from ‘waiting for the good weather’. If conditions are not favourable, make them to be.
3. Reach out to others. Don’t sit still within your area of comfort and wait for others to meet you, as if they are owing you or something. Step out of your comfort zone and you’d be surprised at what you’d find.
4. Before you get into something, make sure it’s God’s will for you. Even if you wait for the ‘good weather’ and God’s hand isn’t in what you want to do, you are asking for frustrations and disappointments.
5. Expect criticisms and move on. Someone quipped that, ‘the only way to avoid criticisms is to say nothing, be nothing and do nothing’. Unless you have plans to remain a nonetity in life, I don’t think you will still want to wait for the ‘good weather’ just to avoid criticisms. Hear all criticisms, learn from the constructive ones and discard others.
6. Accept mistakes as the price of progress. Because you want to avoid mistakes is no reason to wait for the ‘good weather’ before performing tasks. A benefit of making mistakes is that you learn an additional way NOT to perform a task. A mistake every now and then won’t kill you. Learn from them and move forward.

Don’t ‘wait for the good weather’, but in your thoughts and actions, make the ‘weather’ how you want it to be!
YOU ARE A WINNER!!!