Welcome to the August 22nd edition of Faith & Life Lessons.
You will see this email full of tidbits from my week. My goal is simple. I hope that from how I live my life, you can find a thing or two that helps you as you try to live a life that matters. I am always trying to do one thing - make Christ-focused decisions in love, work, and life. And this was my week.
The Story Of My Week
This week, I lost a young soul. She was a wonderful Christian and served in a faith-based teen-focused NGO I had served and held leadership roles in.
She was shinning light who burned brightly.
After battling sickness for over a year, she felt it was time for her to go to the other side and rest. And God answered that prayer. She had lived a full life at 24 years.
The depth of loss was palpable amongst the group.
I spoke with one of the leaders and our conversation gave me a sense of not only his grief but the collective grief.
Words fall shallow during such grief and I could only offer the comfort of someone who had gone through something similar
My best friend died in a plane crash and almost 2 decades later, I still feel the loss.
The God of all comforts gives us comfort in our grief so we can comfort those who will need it later on.
And that's all I could do.
In my tribute to her, I tried to offer the same comfort to the other members of the NGO.
I'll put that at the end of this email.
In case, you might find something of comfort in it for yourself
Or someone out there fighting grief from the loss of a loved one
And asking questions
It won't answer all the questions
But it might give you a little something to lighten the load
So you can walk straight in a new light
Things I Learnt
1-A Peddler of a Strange Gospel: I get feedback from people of some of the stuff I write and how it doesn't seem to line up with conventional or general ideas of what Christianity is.
I am always first to be critical about everything I write. My reason is simple. I carry a heavy punishment for teaching anything that does not line up with the complete gospel.
This is one of the reasons why I try to read the whole Bible every year. It is meant to ensure that everything I write aligns with the whole Bible.
While on the phone with someone, we got into talking about scriptures. At a point, I said that God sometimes takes believers home at a young age, irrespective of how they died.
He asked if I could change it to "God allows it". We then went into a deeper conversation that probably must have gone on for over an hour.
My goal was simple. I hoped to give him a better understanding of God's power over His creation.
God has control over all His creation. He doesn't just allow things - He decrees them.
I had a similar argument with someone else a few weeks back.
I think part of the reason for us disagreeing with this is because we have been told for years that God is a spiritual Santa-Claus who only gives good stuff when we are good.
Guys like us now sound like peddlers of a strange gospel when we tell people that God is responsible for both the good times and bad times.
For reasons that only He completely understands, He decrees bad times - not just allow it
I keep on checking my doctrine to be sure that what I hold to is consistent with the whole Bible
Not just aligning to a verse or story in the Bible
2-Living in Priority: The main reason you are just getting this email - one day late is because of certain priorities I made to myself.
I promised to be present to everything I commit to. But I think the most important thing I did for myself was to define a hierarchy for all my commitments.
It's something I named the Full Life Triangle. It has helped me reduce the conflicts that come from making everyday decisions.
This weekend, I had to choose between commitments. And some commitments came higher than writing this email
My commitment to you meant, it had to still go out. But my higher commitments meant it had to go out later.
It took me a while to be able to define what is most important and least important per time. But doing it ahead of time minimizes the conflicts in everyday decisions.
Hola at me if you want to know more about this
Postscript
Today is going to be different. I'll be posting the tribute I put up for the friend that passed away in the last week...I hope you find comfort and encouragement through it.
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I still remember the first time I met Tamilore
She made her debut appearance during the last days of camp 2015. If you work back the maths, she could have been in platoon G. But she had the maturity and calmness to pull this off. So she got huddled with us at Camp Office and off began her experience.
Sometimes the fun of leading camp is been able to adjust ideas on the spot so you can create an experience for both volunteers and camper. She may have joined Camp at the end but she sure was a fine mind to bounce off ideas and refine them with.
I disappeared from the scene afterward but got more insight into the wonderful mind that she carries during the conversations we used to have on the old SOLID WhatsApp group. Questions into spiritual matters seemed to bring out the sensibility in a voice that needed to be heard. I know there were people on the group who would look forward to reading Tamilore's take on a matter. And yes, I am one of those people
In a world of fading lines of pure absolutes on spiritual matters where it is easy to play to emotions and sentiments, I respected her ability to maintain steadfastness to what she was convinced in God's way of seeing things.
Her passing away raises the questions that we may never find convincing answers on this side of heaven.
Questions like "why does God take away good people?" and the likes may never find answers that meet the depth of the hurt that most of us feel.
I can not claim to completely understand but perhaps I can share with you a bit of the comfort I have found having lost a best friend in a plane crash. We didn't get a body to bury so that made it hurt even more.
It's over 18 years since the crash but he is still missed. Perhaps because we didn't bury a body, I still have dreams that he survived the crash and lost his memory. And he made a return into my life after recovering his memory. You may blame my fascination with Hollywood for my mind to be playing this trick on itself
The whole thing brings to stark reality the words of late Selwyn Hughes "it's when we grieve the least that we miss the people we have lost the most". And our inability to find answers may increase the sense of loss even more.
But I found an answer - maybe not the full answer. But an answer that reaffirms my faith in God.
The answer I found through my grief and loss was this "sometimes God takes good people when we don't expect so that those of us left behind can always remember that eternal life on this side of heaven is not measured by the length of life but the quality of life lived. And there is no higher quality of life than a life lived knowing God. The lives of the Taken Ones was full because they lived to know God"
I believe that Tamilore lived like this. I am glad I got to know her and learn from her depth of knowing God (I still went to the old SOLID WhatsApp group today to read some of the stuff she shared)
Tamilore, thank you for blessing our lives with how you lived and helping to make the Bride of Christ look a little purer.
I look forward to seeing you on the other side when we can rock the joint in a place where time is lost in forever and the pain of living everyday fades in the light of eternity.
You have gone ahead of us to the place where we will find answers for all the questions we lived all our lives asking. Seeing Jesus face-to-face will be the answer that will meet all these questions
Keep rocking, it's only a matter of time before we all come to roll with you
Tamilore, Abba's Child
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Tata,
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Tola Akinsulire
Blogger, Tolawrites.com
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