Once upon a time, my room mates at the university, two beautiful girls, decided to fight.
It was a great fight, complete with the scattering of personal belongings and even the total uprooting of someone's weave.
I had just returned from class. Absolutely knackered, I had fallen asleep.
And then the fight woke me. I lay on my bed wondering "Chineke Nna, what kind of thing is this?"
But somehow, I did nothing.
I just lay there, staring into space.
And like a fire that had exhausted its fuel, the fight eventually came to an end.
Next day, I got dressed and went to class, saying absolutely nothing about the chaos the room had become and the events of the day before.
Returning that evening, I heard my room mates discussing.
"chuka really disappointed me, yesterday. She didn't even come out of her corner to know what was going on." said one.
"I can assure you she did not hear. She was sleeping. There is no way she would hear her room mates fighting and she wouldn't say something." said another.
"She heard! How could she have slept through it?"
"She did not hear!"
"She heard!"
"She did not hear!"
"She heard!"
"She did not hear!"
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
When I came in, my friend came to ask me.
"chuka, did you hear of the fight yesterday?"
"I did. But I chose to say nothing. It was none of my business."
The disappointment that fell on the room was chilling.
Cold and hard, like a winter night in Siberia.
But, why were my room mates so disappointed in me?
I was not responsible for the behaviour of adults. I was not in the place of their parents. I was not paying their school fees. I was not the hall governor, or hostel mistress, or SUG president.
I was simply a student like they were, navigating through the difficulties of medical school.
There were other students who witnessed the fight but chose to stroll by.
The school had a security department, which got absolutely no blame for not intervening in the fight.
Why was this disappointment heaped on me? Someone who was knackered, sleepy, weighed down by heavy books, possibly medically 'traumatised'?
The reason was very simple.
And it is that same reason that the #HallelujahChallenge has been so successful at attracting so much antagonism to itself. One of the core reasons I would quickly add, as concentrated envy-dioxide and bitterness against the Most High are also culpable.
One critic-cum-writer opposed to this gathering of God's children, was markedly sincere, much to my admiration.
He said and I quote "..The rest of us who are criticising don’t have the answers to the problems facing the country.."
What a profoundly touching statement of fact that is!
Friends, the Apostle Paul in the 8th chapter of Romans made this reason clear.
He wrote: "For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now."
Vs 19,21
The world is aware that its only hope is in God, whether it chooses to admit it or not.
Other religions hold their meetings for protracted periods of time, but are not held accountable for the problems in the country.
But your one hour☝🏾meeting, which poses a grand total of ZERO👌🏾threats to the wellbeing of its critics feels like a stab on an old wound. And for that, there is a cause.
Indeed, we are the light of the world. But, a lot of us have hid the candle under the bushel.
The critics know they do not have the light. They cannot stop bribing road safety and customs officials. They cannot stop sitting on people's files. They cannot stop their corruption. They cannot do without examination malpractice. They cannot stop the lying, the cheating, the wickedness.
They are waiting for you. They need you to walk worthy of God, to strike your match and dispel the darkness.
The soup is tasteless. They do not have the salt. They need you to spray yourself abroad oh salt of the earth, preserve this country from decay, make this food edible.
Friend, did you give you life to Christ when Brother Nath made those altar calls?
You are one more candle added to the mix. Please, let your light shine.
Were you cut to the heart when he said the hands you are using to clap to the Lord should not be used to caress a woman who is not your wife?
Did it tug on your heartstrings when he asked "Ain't you tired of that void in your heart, that neither sex nor drugs can fill"?
Were you subdued when he said that merely going to church wasn't the point, knowing Jesus is?
Did you repent? Did you say the sinner's prayer?
That's the revival! Please let it bloom and beautify the world!
But the amusing thing about letting your light shine, unfortunately, is that you would still be persecuted.
When you say no to bribery, to exam malpractice, to lying to "cover up" for them, to the murder of the unborn, to the cutting of corners, citing your new found faith or its restoration; the world won't be happy.
They need you to live up to your faith but not live up to your faith, to do something to "Save yourself and save us also!" but not save yourself and save us also.
Chai..😄
Much as my room mates were mocking my faith back then, so were they desperately in need of my attention in their personal affairs.
Friend, that is the lot of we Christians.
We walk worthy of God, not to please the world, as the world CANNOT be pleased by us, but to simply obey the Lord and "Let our lights so shine..!"
Let their disappointment in us, thickly masked with pseudo-intellectual lines that unfortunately cannot hide their utter helplessness without the light that is the Christ in us, jolt us into this realisation.
Like Christ we ought to live.
Back to my story.
Couple of years ago, I met one of the lovely ladies who fought on that day, in England, at a Christian convention. She had become a believer! Now married to a fine godly man, she currently pursues her PhD in a British university.
Those seeds I sowed..
Wipes tears of joy