A few
weeks ago, I was in a taxi [PS: Taxis in
Port-Harcourt may or may not be privately/personally chattered. You could get
in a taxi like you get in a public bus – that’s the kind I was in]. So, I
was sitting behind the driver in this “public” taxi with two other passengers
beside me at the back seat when I realized that my left ear was missing its
earring. “Oh no!” were my first thoughts. To my jewelry-using sisters out
there, you know how you feel when you lose one ear of your earring pair. It’s
awful! Trust me, brothers, it is. Those ones are my best pair of earrings. They
were not expensive, but they are beautiful. Without even looking for it, I began
thinking about how to get another pair of the same kind. As I was thinking, a
passenger sitting beside me got to her stop and alighted. This gave me a little
room to search for the missing earring. I put my hand in between the seat,
checked on the floor of the car, but didn’t find it. A little while after, the
other person sitting beside me got to his stop and also alighted. I had even
more room to search for the earring, and I did; all the time, checking on my
right side, and in front of me. I gave up and decided to 'deal with it'. I was
fast approaching my stop and would soon alight, when I suddenly decided to reach
out with my left hand to the side of the door by which I sat. I was so sure
that I wouldn’t find it, but then, I did. I found my missing earring hanging
somewhere on the door by my left foot. As soon as I picked it up, I reached my
stop and got off the taxi. Of course, I was thrilled. I excitedly thanked God
that I had found my missing piece of earring. One would have thought it was
something more serious. Lol. I caught myself being too excited, and I tried to
behave myself when I received the words, “reach out!”
Many times,
in life, we give up too easily and too quickly. We desire a thing or more, and after
a little effort, we give up; and then we, feeling defeated, decide that maybe
it was never ours. Wait a minute, though, what if it was yours? What if that
was the exact thing God wanted for you; but you, being in a hurry or being too
lazy, didn’t reach a little further and you lost it. If I hadn’t reached out to
my left at the time I did in that taxi, I would have alighted, and just thought
the earring was lost somewhere unknown and there was nothing I could have done
about it. I could have probably even said something like, “Maybe this is a sign
that God didn’t want me to use jewelries again, OR maybe the earrings were too
long and too dangly and I should have been more conservative.” But no, none of
these were it. The earring was in the car right by my foot, and I just needed
to reach out a little to the left, a little bit further, in a little bit more
time to find it.
Bad things
happen and we decide it is God’s will. How wrong? James 1:17 straightly tells
us that ALL good and perfect gifts come from the Father of lights, with whom is
NO variableness, neither shadow of turning. God does not delight in anyone’s
death, poverty, misfortune or suffering. Ezekiel 18:32 says that He doesn’t
delight in the death of a sinner. Neither does He derive pleasure in the death
of a saint, according to Psalm 116:15. His thoughts towards us are not of evil
but of peace to give us an expected end (Jeremiah 29:11). No form of evil seems
like God’s definition of expected end to me. He delights in your prosperity and
not in your hardship (Psalm 35:27; 3rd John 2). BUT, He won’t do it
all for us. God knows that there are some things we can’t do for ourselves,
which He must help us with, and thankfully, He does. But He also knows that
there are those we can do for ourselves, and those, He won’t do for us. When we
give up too quickly, we fail to access what God has prepared for us, and with
that, God is not pleased.
As able
believers, who can do all things through Christ that strengthens us
(Philippians 4:13), we should refuse to settle for less, we should refuse to
settle for what life dishes us, we should refuse to give up [like I almost did
in that taxi in my mundane missing-earring
situation] and just reach out a little bit further to receive what is divinely
ours. With a little more push, some more prayers, a little more reach, and
sometimes, in a bit of more time, we can get a hold of what is ours.
Reach out. Don’t Give Up!
