You Don't Lose Giving Respect

Faith & Life Lessons - May 16, 2021

Welcome to the May 16th 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.

You Don't Lose Giving Respect...The Story of My Week

One of my neighbors took me on regarding a practice that our family and the family next to us did.

Both sets of parents call each other “mummy” or “daddy” not by their first names.

The neighbor asking is English so it sounded peculiar every time we did it.

I told him that it was driven more by our cultural practice of respect for elders. We did not expect our children to call the next-door parents by their first names. So, we modeled what we wanted our children to practice.

Even in a strange land.

This was something we were not going to lose with our kids.

And it’s a practice we keep for ourselves. I recall an older missionary couple that we used to visit with before they retired and returned to the US.

My wife and I could not imagine ourselves calling them by their first names - even though almost everyone around did that.

Because of how close we were to them, we adopted them as grandparents to our son. We called them grandpa “xxx” and grandma “xxx” instead.

Even though it was not part of their culture, they seemed to appreciate it.

I discovered that respect is a gift you give which communicates a sense of how you value the person who receives it.

You can’t go wrong with it.

And that’s why I keep giving it.

Things I Learnt

1-When God’s Will Takes More Than We Want to Give: in 2018, about 110 girls were kidnapped in Dapchi Local Government of Nigeria from their school by the terrorist group Boko Haram

About 5 of them died while all the other girls have been released except 1.

The sole girl, Leah Sharibu, a Christian was told she would be released if she converted to Islam.

She held on to her faith and refused compromise as a prelude to her release.

And because of that, she remains with her captors, over 3 years later.

On May 14th, she turned 18, living a life that her faith in God thrust upon her.

She is a reminder for me that doing the God thing is not all happy stories.

Thank you, Leah, for inspiring me with your life and conviction of faith.

Happy 18th birthday.

2-Osmosis for a Good Cause: we had a young couple over for lunch during the week.

With all the balls, we’re juggling at the moment, hosting was not top of mind for us.

They had asked us a couple of times over the last 6 weeks to let them know when our calendar had free space in it.

In recent times, I have heard too many stories of marriages in crisis.

There is a part of me that feels some of these marriages could have been helped if they had good friendships with other married couples they could learn from.

Because of that, we invited them over this week - even though we could do with the time for ourselves.

We hoped that our friendship would bless their faith and marriage.

I have learned that people pick up examples and lessons easily from casual meet-ups and conversations.

So, we had them over and a jolly time it was.

An opportunity to bless others with our time

Postscript 

May the busyness of every day not distract you from blessing the people around you with your friendship and fellowship. May you be the lighthouse that Jesus sends to help them find their way when things get dark for them. Amen

Tata,

Tola - The Everyday Disciple

I help Christians like you who want to live intentional lives incorporate their faith into everyday life so they can make Christ focused decisions in all areas of life and truly live to make an impact and make God happy.