One of the drama series from the stable of the legendary Wale Adenuga is aptly entitled ‘This Life’.
And, yes, this life! Wale Adenuga started off small. I remember in my secondary school days, his Ikebe Super, Papa Ajasco and Dauda (Lolly) gave us youngsters much to talk and laugh about.
Adenuga kept graduating his game and, today, he has become a colossus, bestriding the entertainment business genre. In fact, it is no more a laughing matter but a serious business, with even a group of schools, including a polytechnic where theatre practitioners go to hone their skills.
Pencil in God’s hand, that’s how he describes himself. Yes, pencils in God’s hand; that’s what we all are! Are you a blunt or sharp pencil, in whose hand are you and what are you writing?
I remember again how my late uncle, Dee Cyril, taught me in my grandmother’s sooty kitchen, holding my hand with charcoal, as I wrote. Later, I mastered the art of writing and I have never stopped writing. In fact, writing is my life and I can’t imagine any other trade for me besides writing.
Indeed, everyone writes something, even if not professionally. You don’t really need ink and paper to write. You write with your gestures, conduct and speech, and like we submit our scripts to the examiner after writing an examination, a day shall come when we shall submit ourselves to the Chief Examiner, God Almighty, to vet and reward us accordingly.
Let me note here that I have fumbled so many times. I had done things I was forbidden to do. I had said things I should never have said and gone on unapproved trips in flagrant disobedience to Him who gave me life. I kneel before Him in repentance and contriteness, pleading for mercy and forgiveness. I do so now because He is the Chief Examiner and could call for my bedraggled scripts anytime, as He could also call for yours.
When the Chief Examiner shouts ‘time up’ and calls for our scripts, what would be the likely content. Wasted blood of the innocent? Humongous wealth oozing with sleaze and slime? Putrid odour of fetuses cooked in abortion theatres or what?
In this Exam Hall we call the world, we are all in the same class. There is neither senior nor junior. There is no president or slave, rich or destitute.
In December last year, we buried our father; he was 81 years old. And last Friday, my immediate younger brother went to join him in faraway Inglewood Cemetery, California, USA; he was just 53. The hurt is still searing like hot iron but what shall we do but submit to Him whose will is supreme? I really wish it wasn’t now but who am I to dictate to the Chief Examiner when to collect the scripts?
It was He who set the time and only He knows the right time for each student. My dad’s was 81; my younger brother’s 53. Imagine the disparity but that is in the eyes of man.
I don’t know when He shall call for my own scripts and I’m sure you don’t know yours either. However, wisdom demands that you and I prepare for that inescapable eventuality by doing the needful.
Take note too that, in God’s court, there is no Nigerian angel or man of power to pervert justice as we are wont in our clime. There, justice is naked, fierce and just; you reap what you had sown.
Sowing is like writing. Some write jagajaga like I did when I first started, while others write legibly even though we’re equally taught. In sowing, we choose our crops; nobody imposes cassava on you when your interest is cocoyam. However, having planted cocoyam, how do you think you could reap cassava therefrom?
This life; yes, this life!
Life is an irony; nobody but God can fathom it. He gave it to us as a trust but we are inclined to shut him out of His creation. How possible can that be? “Woe to him who strives with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth! Shall the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ Or shall your handiwork say, ‘He has no hands’? Isaiah 45:9
However, God chose to allow us to run the life He gave as we please, but not without instruction. The Bible tells us in Joshua 24:15: “Choose you this day whom ye will serve… but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Joshua made his own choice. So, what is your choice? Carousing and debauched lifestyle? A witch doctor in cassock, whether in church, luring people to hell? A gaudy Jezebel luring perishing men into your entangling pit of death? Two-faced, not necessarily singing African Queen but covering the truth, because ‘anywhere belle face’ brings you gain?
You are a raging heathen. God will laugh and hold you in derision (Psalm 2:4). He promises to laugh at you on the day of your calamity that is around the corner (Proverbs 1:26).
Ask the rich man that despised poor Lazarus (Luke 16). Ask the rich young fool that had no time for God but his wealth (Luke 12:16-20).
Or better still, ask the wiser Nicodemus, who stole to Jesus at night, hungry for the Word of life. Being a top shot in society, he didn’t want fellow big men to mock him. Is that why you are running away from God? Your varnished, vanishing title; your wealth, your social status…? All these shall fail you on the day your script is called and you become shawarma for worms.
It doesn’t matter if you do like Nicodemus; thank God he did, even if it was nighttime. You can go secretly; get the Truth and then proclaim it openly; it will save your life. The church is not a place for saints but a place of sinners becoming saints. Nobody comes to church as a saint. So, don’t be inhibited by your sins.
Zacchaeus was a fraudulent taxman; Paul too was once a murderer and persecutor of the church. Mary Magdalene was demon-possessed and purportedly a prostitute but all that changed when the blood of Jesus cleansed them of their filth. Jesus is asking if you would like to be made whole from your leprous lifestyle. Would you?
This write-up offers you an eraser from God to wipe off the jagajaga you have been writing on your script; you can begin afresh. Jesus is present at your heart’s doorway, knocking. Please, open to Him and sup with Him. It is for your own good; He wants to hear you welcome him so that he can accept and comfort you. ‘‘For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.’’ 2 Corinthians 6:2.
So, do it NOW; before your script is called. The Chief Examiner approaches fast, angry and vengeful; don’t delay for even another second. When this life ends and you wake up on the other side, what life awaits you there?
Life is like a bird on flight. Nobody but God really knows when and where it will alight. However, in man’s foolish calculations, we foolishly snap the cord that binds us to our root. We forget where we took off from, and that thereto we shall return. We get adorned in strange toga, losing our heavenly badge.
Your blood was engendered from on High. It has a voice like the blood of Abel had and bids you to return home from the wild. Oh, weary wayfaring soul; return home NOW before time is overspent.