The home we’re leaving behind is our nation, Nigeria, how well have we done, in assuring that we leave behind a nation worthy of being bequeathed to our children?
So, I attended the 50th birthday church service for a dear friend, brother, and client yesterday, and he got me thinking about this life. He had made and lost a fortune, he has seen life in all it’s many facets. He has traveled roads, I pray never to pass.
But yesterday, I saw him prepping for the most important journey of all. The journey home. I saw him acknowledge his own humanity. I witnessed him nude before his Creator in obeisance. I watched him act out Solomon’s conviction that life is vanity. I saw a man ready to go home. He has set me thinking, and I want you along with me.
A few years ago, I attended the funeral of an old friend from LASU “alaaro” Sege, and for the first time since my sister died in 1992, I wept. I wept like a baby at the sight of Segun’s coffin, plain and shorn of ornaments, mahogany, austere, beautiful in it’s simplicity. I wasn’t weeping for Segun. He was gone. My tears were all for myself. I shall one day be as he was.
I have shown you the two pictures above, in order to drive home a lesson for us all. Life is a journey. We will all die someday, sometime. Some will die young, as did my sister, Adetoun, and as did Segun Okunrinboye. Others will live long, as I pray, and hope to, but the length of days are not the true measures of a good life.
Number your days, that you may apply it to wisdom. I am learning to number my days, I have learnt to live conscious of my mortality, but devoid of the limitations of fear, and whilst I am not ready to die, I am also not ready to live as though I be dead, even whilst drawing breath.
Prophets are called to different pulpits and nations. I have a burden for Nigeria. I have the capacity to relocate anywhere in the world. But it has pleased God to give me a burden for this blighted land. So, I am preparing for my journey home.
When you’re done packing for your journey, and before you leave your home on your travels, you ensure that you have locked doors, you shut some windows, and some you open for various reasons. If you have pets, you arrange for their care whilst you’re gone. The care of the precious home you are leaving behind, is just as important to you as your luggage, passport, and your visa.
Let’s agree that since we’re all going to die someday, this metaphorical journey is our death. The home we’re leaving behind is our nation, Nigeria, how well have we done, in assuring that we leave behind a nation worthy of being bequeathed to our children?
If you imagine that the wealth you have acquired with your fawning acquiescence, complicity, silence, and cowardice, will insulate your children from the madness we’re seeing systematically normalized, you have learnt nothing from history.
If it pleases God to tarry in taking me home, 2018 is the year that I shall actively begin the task of preparing my home, Nigeria, for my journey. I will never leave Nigeria on any form of exile, and I will not be silenced by the shadows of death that daily dogs the steps of every woman, and man, of conscience in our clime.
Get your home ready for the journey home.
Shalom!
First published 9 December, 2017.
