Welcome to the August 11th 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.
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The Story of My Week.
We love God showing up as The Protector.
But He adds more adventure to our lives by showing up as The Deliver.
As The Protector, He keeps challenging times from reaching us.
As The Deliverer, He keeps us in challenging times.
I had a dose of God The Deliver during the week.
My family and I were on the way to the airport. We were going in two cars. My family was in the car that I was driving.
One of the drivers from the office was driving the car with our luggage.
At some point en route, the driver called to say the car had developed a fault.
My wife picked up the call. I packed that car so I could get a better sense of what had happened.
I did all the usual things - clear the road and have my hazard light on.
It just so happened that a delivery bike rider coming much later probably had his mind on something else, so he rammed into the back of my car.
Fortunately, he was not hurt seriously. But as you can imagine, a lot more delivery bike riders stopped to “save” their poor defenceless colleague from the “rich oppressor”.
It didn’t matter that he was the guy who ran into my car. For them, he was hurt and the “oppressor” had to pay.
God sent us 3 policemen who acted as arbiters. They recommended that I try to support his medical costs. Something more even happened. The delivery company senior representative was not far away so he joined us at the accident spot.
I told him that I was willing to support his medical costs, not as an admission of guilt but rather as a goodwill gesture. I normally don’t carry cash but the day before I had visited the ATM of a new bank account I opened. I decided to test if their machines dispensed more cash than my previous bank.
They did and that’s how I have more cash than I have ever had on me in a long time. I was able from that cash to give them some support to help with his medical costs. I imagine they might still reach out to me in the new week.
We spent probably an hour or so at that spot. When I got into the car, the driver with the luggage had not yet been able to move. He said he was getting the car towed back to the office. I couldn’t understand why. A driver from the office could bring another car to meet up with him and do the transfer of the luggage to the new car.
Later on, I found out that the boot of the car refused to open. They had to take the car back to the office and get a panel beater to jack it open.
Talk about everything happening at the same time.
By the time they got to the office, got the trunk open, transferred to a new car and headed out, we were just holding out to hope that the family would still be able to fly.
I continued to drive to the airport and hoped that the airline would be nice enough to wait for our luggage to arrive.
They gave us an 8 pm deadline - this was an 8:30 pm flight.
The luggage arrived about 10 minutes before 8 pm. The rest was a mad rush to the finish line.
We made it.
God showed us how He delivers.
First, I had cash on me which I normally don’t to address the accident situation.
Second, the biker’s injuries were not serious.
Third, we had offered to host another family in our home and they were travelling on the same flight with our family.
Once the issues came up, they had gone to discuss with the airline. This gave us breathing room when we got to the airport.
One of the most touching moments in the whole thing was when one of our kids said “Let’s pray” and he prayed for us.
I was touched because it was heartwarming to see the next generation of our family already seeing that God is the one who solves all situations.
God is The Protector.
God is The Deliverer.
And we live under His Shadow.
Things I Learnt
1- Relating With People for Maximum Impact: Someone expressed shock at how a much younger person addressed me directly by name without any prefix like “Mr” or “Bro”.
For proper context, I knew the younger person when she was still in secondary school. I was about 30 years old at that time. I was a class mentor to her at some point and she called me using a prefix before my name throughout.
She is done with university and has been working for a couple of years now.
In the intervening years, she stopped using the prefix and called me by my name.
The person expressing shock could not understand how this should have been allowed to happen. Or better put, how dare she do something like that?
Me?
I was oblivious to that fact.
Why?
I am always looking to find the fastest way to bridge any power distance gap so that I can make the maximum impact on the people who look up to me.
I want to leave a legacy and it matters little to me what you call me. The important thing to me is that you respect the value of what I carry on the inside. If you do that, you will get the best from me.
Maybe it is because of how I grew up. I moved fast in my schooling and I was always the youngest in most of my classes.
It taught me to earn respect from people older than me because of what I brought to the table. That’s how I ended up in leadership roles in my secondary school and during my undergraduate studies.
I apply that same approach to almost all my relationships with older and younger people.
No prefix to my name? A prefix to my name? It matters little as long as you respect the value of what I bring to the table. This multiplies my impact the most.
2 - How Christians Change the World: I will not write much on this. The only thing I will say is this - The weapons that we win with are not natural.
If we do only the things the rest of the world does, we do not create eternal change.
Our biggest world-changing attribute must be eternal, not natural.
I saw some Christians complaining that others were not engaging in a particular way to change the world.
It’s easy to criticize and lament if you are only looking at the natural events.
Elisha’s servant was scared until he saw the angels around them.
I want to be like Elisha - seeing the right things and changing the world with better-than-natural tools.
I rest my case.
Postscript
May you bring change to the world in a way that honours Jesus Christ. Amen
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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.
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