On my hands was a letter that admitted me to Nairobi High School. It was now stained and was fading out since it was four years old. My memory flashed back to the stint I received the letter, and how my family had been so blissful for me, but a happiness blended with fear and sadness.
By then I was still a little lad, and everything I did had to meet the prerequisite from me of pleasing my parents. I had excelled in my Primary Education examination and found admission at Nairobi High School. I then looked at the countenance on my parents’ faces. It was a amalgam of joy and intense sadness. I couldn’t help but let waterworks roll out from my eyes and I never wiped them as they saturated my cheeks. I felt a bitter bulge form in my throat as I examined the situation of my parents.
“Never worry my son,” my pater finally spoke out, “God who gave you this knowledge has your future in His capable hands”…
These words came like a painless sting into my mind and triggered more tears from my eyes. I knew it was nobody’s fault that my family was financially vulnerable. As little as I was, it was very clear to me that my dad could never afford the cash to educate me in that school.
As I gave my dad a tight hug and soaked his unkempt coat with my tears, I remembered all my Primary School friends and how we used to fantasize together about one day making up whatever professionals we fancied of. They were now going ahead to pursue their dreams, but my own dream had been clogged by the tall “trees” standing between me and sunshine!!! My dream was now exposed and there wasn’t much I could do to salvage it.
All my life I ever wanted to be an engineer. I used to imagine the day I could be financially capable to repay my parents for all the quandaries they had gone through to bring me up and edify me. Was this even going to be possible when I was going to end my studies in Junior School??
I looked up at my elder brother, who had just finished High School but was not going to commence studies as an electronic technician as he had planned. I used to be amazed at his electronic skills when he was in High School. He was the one who had inspired me to become an Engineer one day, because he used to tell me that our future is what we conceived in our minds.
My brother looked back at me with a reassuring smile. He suddenly whispered into my ear, “Congratulations! I see an Engineer in your eyes”. Was he sightless? Didn’t he visualize the situation at hand? What was so hard to see that this marked the end of my studies? These are the questions that were running through my mind…
The next day my dad told me with so much regret that I was going to join Maskini Secondary School. I pictured the school. It was not even in the map!!! It was a small community school that had been launched only 5 years ago and had never performed significantly. It was there to admit those pupils who scored marks too low to find admission into any other High School. Yes, this was going to be my home for the next four years, and this is where I was going to machinate my dream and make it work.
Without any objection, I thanked my dad for the decision since I knew that this would mean at least I tried, even if I fail. After all, this is what my family could afford and I couldn’t push them beyond their limits.
My first day at school implied that I would never cope. If I tried to talk to any of my friends there about their future, all they’d rather talk about was their present. They told me that the future was too complex for them to understand. This was a mixed gender school, so all the ladies could think of was to finish high school and find a man to marry them and make them house wives!!
Boys on the other could rather talk about their past instead of their future. On Mondays they could shamelessly talk of how they spent the weekend in fornication and other sinful activities. Having been brought up in Christian ways, every time that conversation came up I could isolate myself and say a prayer silently, hoping that God would open their eyes one day to see the way that He wants them to follow.
This continued until God heard my cry and let me know that I was not alone. He brought into my life this young boy called Joe in my life. Joe explained to me how his parents had succumbed to a tragic road accident when he was a kid. He couldn’t go to a high School because there was no one to pay for his school fees. He had wanted to become a surgeon, but that dream was now just as a blur as mine.
That evening as I reached home, I sat in front of my tin lamp as with my books open, but my mind was somewhere else. I recollected the story of Joe, his desolation and the loss of his parents. I pictured my own situation and saw it as nothing. It suddenly emerged to me that I had tried to please everybody in my life except God!!!!! I had tried to find help from everyone in the community but not even once had I talked to God about my situation! I had even been given a four-year Scholarship (at least so had I been told) but due to some “technicalities”, I didn’t receive the scholarship and I honestly don’t know what had happened
Tears rolled down from my cheeks and trickled on my books. My twin brother only thought it was because of the smoke from the tin lamp, but deep inside I was meditating and repenting for what I had turned my life into, for the shield of people I had made and forgotten God as my shield.
I closed my books and went on my knees.
“Lord, let me be a shadow in your light…I have sought help from everyone but you, and I repent. I say thank you for all the victorious plans you have for me, may it be as you wish”…
……
Scoring Grade A was meant for students from National Schools, and people used to say that it would only take a divine miracle for one to score it from Maskini Secondary. Well, who said miracles never happen? How impossible was it in the eyes of God to snatch one A from a national school and give it to one student who prayed for it in Maskini Secondary? Believe me, that is what happened!!!!!!!!
I had asked God for it, and he gave me just that! All my secondary school life had been like a hobby. I never worked so hard for that grade, I just did enough, took a rest and let God do the rest, and He did it for me!
This is the time when it dawned to me that my dream was still intact!!!! I was going to join University just like any other student that passed and I was going to pursue Engineering, and so was Joe going to pursue Surgery!
…
I had fallen into a trance, when I certainly felt a hand on my shoulder. My mum was standing beside me with her small radio and was smiling at me. She seemed to have read every tiny detail of my trance!!!!
“Son, I have been praying for you all these years that God reveals to you that He already did it for you long time ago. He was just waiting for you to see it. If He goes to war for you, nothing can obstruct Him from securing victory for you…” and she looked at the sun which I realized had now gone far above the trees and threw its rays fully down on us… “Just like that sun… It has overcome all the obstructions of the tall trees and is now shining upon us”
As I hugged him with a smile, I listened to her favorite song that she listened to every morning like an alarm tune…
“
You are my resting place, along the narrow High way,
You are my bridge across the open sea
You are my savior and my passage way to heaven
Oh, Jesus I believe in you,
Oh Jesus, I believe
I believe you are the only answer to life’s questions
Lord help me keep my heart in the right direction….
”
God had made me more than a conqueror, and had proven to the village that if He says you shall, none can change that, as long as you remain in love with Him.
According to Bob Hoekstra,
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: "For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. (Romans 8:35-37)
When considering the triumphant Christian life, we may wrongly think that victory depends upon getting out of impossible situations. Actually, we are already "more than conquerors" even while we are in the midst of the impossibilities.
For us to be ultimately defeated, we would have to be separated from Christ's love for us. We would have to be cut off from the loving care of our victorious Lord. Can any foe or any situation accomplish that? "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? " This question is answered in verses 38 and 39. "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
No spiritual foe can enforce such a separation. Neither can any circumstance of impossibility separate us from our loving God. Verses 35 and 36 list some of the impossibilities that make us feel as though we are being defeated. "Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: 'For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter' ." When troubles and pressures arise, when we are attacked or are lacking resources, we may be tempted to think that victory is no longer available. When our experience is like a lamb being led to the slaughter, we may think that victory could never be ours. Nevertheless, the truth is that "in all these things we are more than conquerors."
Yes, right in the middle of the impossibilities of life, we are already more than a spiritual victor. Actually, we have already been made participants in a mighty, eternal, abundant victory, the victory that Christ accomplished on the cross and in the resurrection. "We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us." Our victorious position in any situation is not circumstantial. It is relational. We are united by faith to the victorious one, the Lord Jesus Christ! "But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 15:57).
Dear Father, I praise You for the constant provision of victory through Your triumphant Son. Lord, help me to view spiritual victory as a relational matter and not a circumstantial one. I thank You that through Christ I am already more than a conqueror right in the midst of my present impossibilities, Amen.
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