Life Will Never Be Equal for All
Friend, once you encounter this truth that life will not be equal for all, you will value the price of patience and give yourself rest of mind. Rather than going moody and cantankerous with others, you will see people’s actions towards you as mere drama that needs not be taken seriously in real life. You will laugh when you need to laugh, smile when you need to smile, cry when you need to cry, and move on. You won’t kill yourself, or attempt committing suicide because of your present situation and circumstances.
Did you remember when you left school? How life flung your whole graduating set to different parts of the world? Some landed abroad. Some landed in top companies. Some landed in marriage. Some landed in their remote villages with no sign of active life. Some landed in nursery schools as teachers. Some landed oil company jobs. Some got scholarships. At last, in the first five years after graduation, only 10 % landed their dream jobs while 90% kept tossing on a different continuum, far from their wildest dreams. Even those who co-habited in school were they not flung apart?
There you are, in a remotest village, teaching in a micro nursery school with your hard-earned second class upper degree, and you’re wondering how you even got there in the first place. You heard of you mates doing fine in the cities, riding latest cars, marrying latest spouses, building houses and working in big companies as Shell, NNPC, etc. and you feel miserable and unsuccessful. You begin to despise yourself and your little beginning. The reason you feel that, is because the world attributes success to materialism. People want to define how successful you are by the physical and material things they can attach to you or your name. But God does not measure success by world’s standards of materialism. Don’t despise your little beginnings. Don’t throw away your dreams because of what you see and hear around you. Jesus said Matthew 11: 11 “Verily I say unto you, among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”
Friend, do you know that John the Baptist never performed any miracle? He didn’t raise any dead person. He didn’t cast out any demon. He didn’t live in a mansion. It may amaze you that John the Baptist lived in the wilderness. He never did any great thing that Prophets Moses, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, did, yet his brief ministry of baptism was recognized in Heaven more than all the prophets before him. Jesus concluded by saying that the least of us, who might not heal the sick, cast out any demon, or did any great miracle on earth, is greater than John the Baptist. Why do you want to kill yourself over materialism? Over what the world defines as success? Jesus said that it is more blessed to give than to receive. So, it’s not about acquisition.
Wherever you are, find joy in what you do. If you are teaching in primary school, find joy where you are. Let it be a conscious effort. Naturally, the joy cannot just come, you have to consciously create it, and that does not mean you should settle in your present condition. Sooner or later, you will see God promoting you. By all means, make yourself happy. You see, if you don’t consciously learn how to find joy in the work you do, getting a greener pasture may not actually solve your problem. I have learnt that, even increase in salary can only give you momentary happiness, but sooner or later, you will discover that it does not solve any problem. It in fact, only increases one’s budget and spending.
What should you find in life? Joy. Get it clear that joy is not happiness. Joy is a fruit of the spirit, happiness is not. No sinner can have joy no matter his or her level of happiness. Let me give you an example. A girl may keep committing fornication and feel happy doing so, but right inside of her, she knows what she’s doing is wrong. At such moment she loses her joy and peace, though happy with her boyfriend. Thus, joy and peace are fruit of the spirit. Are you born again? Do you have that joy of salvation?
Don’t throw your joy away because of where you are in that remotest village, in that micro nursery school, in that company that pays so meagre salary that barely sustains you to half of the month. Be patient. Patience is a great virtue. You must learn to bear the weight of waiting, and while you are waiting, don’t hold grudges over close associates that are making it life. Don’t accuse God foolishly for making that prostitute you knew in school, now living fairer and better than you are. God remembers us at different times, and in His time, not in ours.
May be your mates have already put an end to child-bearing while you are yet to find a life partner. Don’t fret, be patient. Don’t go and pressure yourself into doing what is not right. Don’t start dressing seductively, and lowering your standards because men are passing you by. If by your dressing, you arouse a man’s libido instead of his love, he will always tell you he loves you even when he doesn’t.
And if it turns out that you are the one being more favored at present with a good job, good home and good necessities of life than your friends and colleagues, don’t look down on those hustling from one job to another to make ends’ meet. Don’t think you are more hardworking than they are. Don’t despise their hustling. Ecclesiastes 10:7–8 says, “I have seen servants upon horses, and princes walking as servants upon the Earth.” Help when the need arises.