Today, we have quadruplets of thoughts to feast on. One is that God has no good second, two is about the people who use you. Three is the worst there is while four speaks to why you must be permanently humble.
Someone once said that if God didn’t exist, it would have been necessary to create Him. Another person is also said to have said that God is not enough, He is too much. I love those lines. Even more, I treasure the fact that God is not a man and no man (and no woman for that matter) is God -nor can or shall ever be.
Most of us being ever ungrateful or greedy (or both) say that God does not exist or is not good. Continue with that mindset, it is good for you. However, take a moment and imagine what could have been if a human being were God or if God were human. The thought disorientates me.
If a human being were God, they would not have sacrificed own son for the world. They would instead have forced every other family to take turns in donating their firstborn, yearly or monthly, in the name of first fruit. They would have compelled mankind to have one religion or be killed. We should thank God for God: had He been a man, we would all die for not praying fervently, frequently and appropriately per day.
A man as God would withdraw oxygen from our nostrils because we didn’t praise and worship Him when and how we ought to. Imagine your blackmail-loving boss as God. Or your anger-consumed impatient, judgmental spouse or competition-centric colleague: mercy and grace would not exist. Imagine your incurably envious frenemy being the omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient Almighty.
Stop shaking, and imagine it no more. God is not a man, no man is God; no man, no woman, no child shall ever be God. Stop making or seeing or treating them as one. Rather, thank God every time that He’s not a man nor anything like.
As for the people who use you, anytime you remember them remember also the reasons you should not pray for your so-called enemies to die and by fire. Because God doesn’t kill, such prayer is a waste of words, time and power; waste of fire and above all, waste of prayer. Or, since you too are someone’s enemy, would you -for a change- love being killed and by fire?
Ruminate on that while we engage gear. The people who use you, I know, you don’t like them. But, how do you react to them. You curse them or you malign them or you grumble all the time, right?
Listen, to curse or malign or grumble is a bad thing -a very bad something. While conceding that the human world makes not to slip up once in a while totally impossible, methinks the thing is to not make it a lifestyle. Learn to move on easily from a toxic place or person(s). And, please, keep it forever clean.
Really, the matter of someone using you is a Catch-22: neither here nor there. If you look at it dispassionately, you’d see that, in this empty dream called life, everyone is using everyone. In fact, most of those who whine about having been used only bring the matter to the public arena when they could no longer use the person they accuse of using them. So, exercise tremendous restraint before you join someone humming ‘used and dumped’ tunes!
My prescription is that when you confirm someone is using you, do all you can to also use them -simultaneously. If that fails, simply withdraw quietly and sweetly because of the future, and sans further demoting yourself in the eyes of others, which is what happens when you go around with the self-pitying and self-disrespecting chorus of being used. It is shameful to be used and even shamefuller for you to use own mouth to announce it!
Moving on to the worst there is, perhaps I should first ask what you think is the worst that can happen in all of life. Surely, betrayal, hate, lack, sickness, rejection. Surely, joblessness, shame, injustice, illiteracy, addiction. Surely, evil, fear, accident; add to the list, even if you can’t.
Betrayal is bad but it is not the worst. Ditto, hate, poverty and all the aforementioned vices. They are bad, but they are not the worst. Life could still recover from one or all of them and go on to strike gold.
This week, take a break from the threshold of depression that you have sunk into all because of morbid fear and overthinking. Yes, they betrayed or hate(d) or reject(ed) or blackmail(ed) or abandoned you: so what? Did you come to this world with them? Who told you they won’t return tomorrow on their knees, cap in hand, for you to feed them?
Listen up, People of God. There’s no such thing as the worst thing with a person whose heart still beats. So long as you are alive, you can conquer anything and everything. Forget how sick or forsaken or hated or deprived or blackmailed you have been, are and shall be, life is waiting to show you that afflictions cannot be too many for The Big Man who sits high up there to deliver you from them all.
Here’s your only role, though. Make sure to stay alive, come what may. Make sure to not die, no matter what; because, otherwise, life cannot anymore swing things for you. The worst thing in all of life is death: please, never die.
The last of the mental quadruplets is a matter of urgent global importance. Be humble to learn some things and even courageously humbler to accept them. Sometimes, most times, the best shall not be better than the worst. Too many times, A that beat B, C, D and amassed nine maximum points shall on the day that matters most lose to E that had just 3; only for D to come along and defeat E that had defeated A that defeated it.
You may read that last line again, slowly and sensibly. Never brag when you win because the loser could bounce back and play to the final while you don’t even smell the quarters -like every other pretender to the throne. Never get too self-confident: never stop praying even after having crossed the finish line. Never remove your eyes from the ball: never think it is over until it is over and done with.
Be careful when you come against a depleted or underdog opposition. They are the most dangerous, because almost always mercy or favour is their portion. Always be humble: never underrate anyone. Always be tactful: never overrate yourself.
Furthermore, and this is the whole essence, never count your chicks before time. Never hold pre-whistle celebration. There’s nothing as silly, as ridiculous, as embarrassing as the jubilation that ends before it starts. Finally, pray, work, believe always -and while waiting, pray on and on and on.
God bless Nigeria!