Two Women, A Thunderstorm and A Tent Peg

Many times we face all sorts of challenges and problems and the way our families, culture and environment has nurtured us is to think that the only way out of trying situations is to fight OUR way out… make it happen. If all we ‘know’ fails, we try what other people ‘know’…and then our life is this thick maze of ‘trying’ all sorts to resolve the ‘challenge’ that sometimes later has no resemblance to the original challenge we started out with.

At this point, you are probably thinking…

    ‘thats not me’ I am a Christian and I commit all my challenges to God and let Him take control!’

Okay if you say so… but if you are like me who typically follows this process to problem solving:

1. Identifying a problem/challenge/ disaster
2. Praying about it
3. Rapidly put on my problem solving hat and map out the different ways to resolve the issue identified in 1. Decide on the most sensible/reasonable solution
4. Pray to God and hastily inform Him of my ‘chosen’ solution 
5. Embark on Solution….

Sound familiar…? Yeah I thought so 🙂

That always works for many of us until you have to face a situation where you are completely and horribly helpless. Nothing you can do to fix it. I experienced this recently with the very painful loss of my dad… So more than ever before I know what that feeling of helplessness is like and if not careful how difficult it can be to be ‘wholly trusting’ on God to ‘fix things’.

For some people they remain in desperation and denial while some quickly realise that trusting in God is nothing like steps 1-5 described above. Its more like getting to step 2 and then trusting God to show you what step three is.

So what has all that got to do with two women, a thunderstorm and a tent peg?

The people of Israel had been under oppression for twenty years. Serious hard core suffering in the hands of Sisera, the commander of the army of Hazor. The natural solution would be to fight back right? But the people of Israel couldn’t because they did not have the tools or manpower to defeat Sisera and His army. That is a pretty clear interpretation of a hopeless case by any human standard. Yet Deborah (Woman 1) trusted in the Lord and in His promise to deliver them when she asked Barak to gather men to be ready to fight Sisera and win the battle. The main advantage of Sisera’s army was they had this powerful 900 chariots – men on foot could not come up against it. They would be completely trampled.

The night before the battle, there was a great thunderstorm and all the enemy chariots got stuck in mud. So they fled before the people of Israel who chased them ( because now the leverage was gone) and killed them. Sisera the commander fled and found a harmless woman by a tent by the name Jael.

Jael ( Woman 2) invited this previously great and scary man (who is now scared because he is running for his life)  to her tent. He is escaping a battlefield, so a woman alone in her tent is not a threat at all. She gave him something to drink and showed him where he could hide out and rest… she was so harmless that he relaxed well enough to fall asleep!

Dear Jael then picked up a tent peg

and hammered it through his head right into the ground!!!

The great Sisera was dead – death by a tent peg.

So after twenty years of suffering and helplessness, it finally occurred to the people of Israel to call out to God to rescue them. Rescue was so far fetched that it had to come from God… and when it did come, it came in the form of…

Two women, A thunderstorm and A tent peg… (I call it TWATAT) 

Are you in a place where all the odds seem overwhelmingingly stacked against you? Then maybe its time to pause for a moment, take a breath and call out to God for help…

Your own form of a TWATAT might just be waiting to deliver you and bring you respite.

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight…”

– Funmi

– PS – Thanks to my Vicar (Mick Hough) for kindly allowing me borrow the subject title.

He was Remembered for…

I was at a funeral a few weeks ago. We attended the same church but I had never interacted directly with him.

He had been diagnosed with a muscle degenerating disease and I only met him properly shortly after. In the months leading up to when he lost all motor control, speech and any ability to communicate, I marvelled at his stoic consistency & dedication.

I always watched him get wheeled in every sunday for the 9.15 service and on time too. After church he would nod and smile as people came over to say hi. In the last few weeks when he couldn’t smile or nod, his eyes glistened with all the hope and love you could imagine. My emotions gradually changed from that of great joy at seeing him stay consistent and faithful in his worship and determination to be with his fellow brethren in Christ to one of great pain in the last few weeks when I realised how much pain he must have been in – to be in a world with so much noise and activity around you and yet be unable to make use of any available means to communicate. I kept trying to imagine being completely unable to let others know how you feel – unable to point, nod, write, speak …. Yet he was in Church every single Sunday, right to the last one before he passed away. His faithfulness touched my heart and life in more ways than one.

At his Funeral, the Vicar in charge talked about how he went to read the bible to him in Hospice in the last few days and how after each passage, he eyes would beg for more. He kept asking for more! more of the scripture … it was obvious he took great delight in having the words read to him.  Other loved ones spoke about his life and it occurred to me how there was so much good he was known for and would now be remembered for.  I realised we could only genuinely remember him for those things because that was what his day-to-day life was made up of anyway. His dedication, commitment and love for God weren’t habits he picked up when he was diagnosed with a deadly disease or when it was convenient.

It was his WAY of life.

As I drove back home that day I pondered over what I wanted to be remembered for and wondered if any of those things  were habits or characteristics I was displaying now…. i bet you know the answer to that!

We all do that don’t we? We have a nice list of things we want to be remembered for but our lives do not mirror those things. This could be for a number of reasons;

• we are too busy,
• we are waiting to have children,
• waiting for them to grow older,
• waiting to have more money,
• better job,
• waiting for the right timing get more committed in God’s house
• or to giving back…. the list is endless!

Until that funeral service, most of those excuses reasons up there were legitimate and real  excuses (oops, again!), for why we do not ‘do‘ or ‘start’ the things we really want to be remembered for.  But I learnt something new, what you want to be remembered for is not only about how you ‘end’ your life but how you ‘live’ your life.

So do a self test today…If you had no chance to change anything about your life;

would you there be anything memorable that you would be remembered for ( by your family, children, colleagues)?

Would the things you would remembered for ( if any) be the things you want to be remembered for?

 

If not, then that is really something to think about isn’t it?

Think about it, how many of us wake up in the morning with a plan to go to work but get to the bus stop and hop on a bus going in the opposite direction?

eh? Nah, didn’t think so…

No one!

It’s perfectly understandable if you got delayed because there was traffic or the bus broke down or there was an accident and the driver had to take a different route….

whatever the case, you would still BE ON YOUR WAY TO WORK!

Something that would never happen if you kept hopping on a bus going in the opposite direction from your office.

In the same way, why don’t we BEGIN to live our lives the way we want it to be at the end?

Its okay if there are set backs en-route but at least you would still be on track… There is never a right/perfect time… the journey of a thousand steps begins not with the first step but in facing the right direction... and then taking the first step.

My dear friend was taken away by a deadly disease but every day we live is one day closer to the day we die…

So live now ( as you ought)  because there is no other time to do so…

– Funmi

Life, Change and Purpose…

It has been exactly 4.5 years since I last blogged. I remember visiting my site a number of times every year, trying to work up the ‘zeal’ to resume blogging but always deterred by a number of self-made objections. I think the biggest reason that trumped all the others was how there was just ‘too much’ to say about my time of hibernation. By the end of the second year I completely gave up because I convinced myself  I had outgrown that phase.

Why am I back? Well in the last half a decade, I have experienced so many things for the first time; Wife, Mother, Entrepreneur, Mother of two and career change. In fact, I almost feel like a totally different person. While it is true these things have completely and utterly consumed my life, the passing on to Glory of someone whose service and dedication always amazed  me got me thinking again…

What on earth am I here for? ..

Many of us are in the process of discovering this. Some think they have figured out what it is but then get overwhelmed by life and the change it brings, oftentimes leading to a phase where they forget that special (or not) calling/gift they think they have.

Is writing my calling? Well, I don’t know but I do know that I have always found purpose and encouragement in sharing Gods lessons in my experiences with other people. Life is change, change is constant but does constantly changing  mean we forget to take regular pauses to ask the all important question…

what am I here for?

The absence of that question is the ever so subtle introduction of the kind of change that is often self-absorbed and inwardly focused ( your dreams, desires and aspirations only ) without an external link to the outside world.

So while I ponder on Life, the changes it has brought my way and Gods purpose for my life in the midst of all that change, I am glad that I have found myself coming back full cycle  to writing again ( hopefully something in here will bless you!)

So Here I am… staring at change in the face and yelling I am back!!!

– Fumosh

Take a pause… feel His pulse

Gods Grace day by day

A number of my friends have accused me for not updating my blog regularly – especially after my last post addressed something of that nature. What I then explained to them was that I was not just writing (which I love doing), I was doing it on a bigger scale.

Over the last three months I have been working almost full time to finish up on my book. It had been on my mind for over a year but after I wrote the last post, I decided to take a cue from my own lesson and then plunge into it full time.

One of the greatest things that can happen to any individual is the ability to stick with the right habits. Tell me your habits and I will predict your future!  So in order to make my dream of completing the book project, I made writing a habit instead of a hobby. I pushed myself hard and I must say I had no idea I had so much to say.

When operating under my own time frame, i would write about one story in a month or two. But in less than two months i have written about 15 stories!

I realised that in our walk in life we are confronted daily with challenges..many people try to deal with their issues how they know best, but how can we fare well when we ignore the potential to make ourselves better? I had many issues around writing more frequently but the moment i decided to apply discipline and make myself accountable to others for writing, it was like a dam broke and the words kept flowing.

As the dream grew bigger i decided to enlist the help of trusted people who supported my  love for writing. I finally got about 12 stories that were contributed by friends. They were amazing stories and I enjoyed reading every one of them thoroughly. I didn’t even know some of them were such great writers and I would never have known if I had not spoken up that I needed help.

 The book I am working on is a compilation of short and interesting real life stories that have been written to stimulate and encourage people to take an active part in ensuring they live a more fulfilling life through some simple lessons on how to tap into God’s Grace on a daily basis. 

 

 It also revealed another lesson to me; When you have a dream and you have started to work towards it, reality is that sometimes the journey may  suddenly look endless and the results may look bleak – that is usually the best time to seek the support and help of trusted friends who share the same passions as you. You will be amazed as to how a simple action from them can get you bouncing back and rearing to go!

I tried it and it worked and I am now so happy that I can cross that off my list before stepping gallantly into the new year.

The greatest lesson i learnt from it all is how the Grace of God abounds daily unto great things. I decided to take my mind off the overwhelming vision (which was that I needed to write so many stories to compile into a book) and focus on getting past each day.

Every day I would believe in Gods grace to give me a personal experience during the day so that I could write a story about it. It worked greatly. Because it was trust on a day to day basis, I was more at ease and it made me more sensitive to my surroundings and to the lessons I could learn from things around me…and for me, a lesson meant a story.

I titled this post Gods grace day by day because that is what has kept me going since the last time i blogged here. Which is why i gave the book the same title… in Hebrew. So watch out for a book titled JEMIMA!

Merry Christmas and have a new year filled with JEMIMA!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TRUTH…

The Old gate (Nehemiah 3:6) represents truth. In many lives today, this gate is broken down – people no longer rest upon truth.

Truth is always old, and it is upon old things that every new thing must rest. I read somewhere that

   “whatever is true is not new, and whatever is new is not true.”

We live in a post modern society that believes there are no absolutes. So “truth” is being forsaken.

Modern society is rapidly throwing away biblical truth which the church has stood for since Christ’s day. It is saying in effect, that we dont need these things anymore. But if we allow this “old truth” to go, the consequences are that the walls crumble  and then we are just like everyone else.

I often think about the story of a man who went one day to visit an old musician.. He knocked on the musicians door and said

” what is the good word for today?”

the old musician did not say a word. He turned around and went back across the room to where a tuning fork was hanging.

He took a hammer and struck the tuning fork so that the note resounded through the room. Then the musician said

“that, my friend,is ‘A’. It was ‘A’ yesterday. It was ‘A’ five thousand years ago and it will be ‘A’ five thousand years from now”.

Then he added,

“the tenor across my hall sings off-key. The soprano upstairs is flat on her high notes and the piano in the next room is out of tune.”

 He struck the tuning fork again and said,

“That is ‘A’ and that, my friend is the good word for today.”

That is truth, Truth is always the same. Like God, it never changes. We need to rebuild the old gates of truth.

what are the areas we have broken down in this our long journey of life?  truth at work, to the kids, in our relationships, to our spouse…

It just gets worse doesn’t it? every other time one untruth to cover another and then what results is the emergence of a new definition of ‘truth’ – where they are no absolutes… where there is no right or wrong…

Ask for the old paths, where the good way is and walk in it…

Selah

TENA DESIREE TEBEKAEMI

It came again, the betrayer…

Only this time it took one of our very own

You, so full of life

You, a personification of friendliness

 

Tee, you took a walk

Then it became a journey

There was no goodbye

But there was a life well spent

 

You were a dear friend

I remember the first time you spoke to me…

You heard me discussing my accommodation problems with someone

Then walked right over and offered that I could move in with you!

 

All those weeks I stayed with you,

And in the years that followed as your friend

 You showed your true colour

The human embodiment of love, hope, purpose, fun and desire

 

You left behind a message…you lived to love

For that, you will remain alive in our minds

Even in REST, you will not be a memory felt, but a memory kept

Now, that is not a statement,

It is a PROMISE.

 

Till we all meet again

Anytime, anywhere I hear your name

I won’t grieve…

Instead I will remember,

TENA, the young lady who lived a full life

 

 

ONE more STep – The tale of a fly

I dont know if it was while I was washing or if it had walked into the trap by itself…  I had been staring at the fly struggling in the pool (more like a few drops) for a few minutes.

At first I thought it was playing in the water because what attracted me was the way it seemed to be running to and fro inside the pool. It took a little while for me to realise that it was trying to GET OUT of the water.

After a while I noticed it would scurry from one end of the tiny pool of water and then turn and repeat the journey in another direction… what I found amazing was that it always turned just when it had very nearly reached the end of the pool to “dry land”.

that was when I realised that it didn’t know that it was at the end of the pool

– so it would just walk, walk,and then seeing no dry land, turn and head in another direction.

I pulled a chair and sat down to watch. I couldn’t understand it, how could it not know that it was almost free at each point before turning to head back into the pool. I wished it could hear me so I could shout;

 “you silly fool, you could have been free a long time ago”

I watched its pace change from fast scurrying around to a much slower drag as it seemed to now crawl around. I could pick it of the water but I couldn’t and I was angry with it…

why couldnt it just take that one (okay maybe four or five) steps that would lead it out of the pool; was it blind – could it not see dry land?

I left the kitchen and took the chair back to my room. I sent an email or two and then I remembered the silly fly and thought to go back and check up on it.

by the time I got back, it was dead. It was still in the water, it had the two back legs touching dry ground but its body was fully submerged in the pool – so I assumed it must have died while it was turning again to head in the other direction…

even in death, it didnt realise it could have been free – just one more step.

I just started crying. I was both sad and angry at the same time.

how could it not have known? why did it not take a few more steps in the same direction? why did it keep turning around when it was so close to the end?…

a few hours later, when I was on my bed, He started speaking

“do you realise you humans arent any different from that fly? you find yourselves in little pools prepared by the enemy or by accident.

 but you are always too busy trying to get out of it that often times you do not realise that you already have a part of you on dry ground…but because you cant feel the full blast of fresh air signifying dry land, you head back in (your own definition of trying another approach).

then when people ask you, you say fasting is not working, I want to try praying (or any of the many other ways we decide our problems will be solved)…

finally, you give up and die in the man made pool “

I didn’t feel fantastic after that, but at least I knew of other areas where I could make improvement –

the fly was dead forever… but you guys are still alive –  we all, struggling in our different pools

The worst thing that could happen would be in many years for you to look back and realise that you were one step away from a life changing breakthrough but you didnt make it because you were not persistent enough…

Remember, the fly was persistent..only it was not in the right direction!

Without Warning…

Hello guys,

Hope u all had a lovely week. I saw this short clip and i thought it would do as a “food for thought” over the next few days… and maybe help us make a move to change something in our lives…

For this week, i will present us a three course meal…

Click on this link

For the main course, click Allow me to re-introduce the Christ 

Desert is What if you had no more excuses?

Have a great week… and remember –  the worst thing to do after going through those links is to do nothing…

THE BLINDFOLD!

Hello all,

Hope you all had a great weekend. Last week was my birthday and I kept moaning to a friend that I was getting old… (imagine yeah?) Anyway, I woke up this morning feeling tired and  was thinking… “this old age thing is not funny oh” and then, just as quickly, another thought hit me and I realised that its not with how much life we have, its with how much we can put into that life – and remember life comprises of one day rolling into another!

So I thought, Funmi you have a duty to make your  day (and eventually your life) better by blogging today and blessing others!

So, before I could get bogged down with other tiny details of life, here I am! Todays edition is not mine. It was sent to me by email and I think it is a very great piece. Read on…

Do you know the legend of the Cherokee Indian youth’s rite of Passage?

His father takes him into the forest,blindfolds him and leaves him alone. He is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it. He cannot cry out for help to anyone. Once he survives the night, he is a MAN.

He cannot tell the other boys of this experience, because each lad must come into manhood on his own. The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear all kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him. Maybe even some human might do him harm. The wind blew the grass and earth, and shook his stump, but he sat stoically, never removing the blindfold…It would be the only way he could become a man!

Finally, after a horrific night the sun appeared and he removed his blindfold. It was then that he
discovered his father sitting on the stump next to him. He had been at watch the entire night, protecting his son from harm. We, too, are never alone. Even when we don’t know it, God is watching over us, sitting on the stump beside us. When trouble comes, all we have to do is reach out to Him.

Moral of the story:

Just because you can’t see God, doesn’t mean He is not there.

In our world of today, the things that we go through are a lot more trying than sitting in a forest all night!

What I also learnt from this is that if you do not act in the Knowledge that God is there with you in those trying times, chances are 10:1 that you will take your blindfold off before dawn.

… and I hope you dont!

Dependable…

Without opening my eyes, I knew it was morning…

I could feel the shy rays of light pushing its way into the day…into my room

but I couldn’t open my eyes , something was missing…so I lay there.

45mins later, I finally opened my eyes and picked up my phone – no text message

I sighed and closed my eyes again.

another hour passed by before i dragged myself out of bed. I was now two hours behind my plan for the day.

My sms had not come in and I was feeling miserable.

My friend Tosin, had started sending me text messages about two months ago. It started as a morning prayer and an encouragment for the day. He would usually send the sms on his way to work – and because he left for work very early, his sms became my morning alarm. Over time, I got used to waking up to the sound of my phone announcing the sms.

What better way to start your day than to wake up to  a lovely sms before getting out of bed.

On this morning, no sms came in. – Tosin had travelled out of town the day before and could not send me my morning sms. All through the day, I felt like there was something missing from my day, like I was driving at night without headlights…

The next morning, I was on my bed… this time the sms came in a few minutes after I woke up (Tosin got back the night before). I smiled in relief as I opened my eyes to reach out for my phone  – and that was when He spoke…

” Funmi, do u know it would be nice if you could be this consistent and sold out to speaking with me every morning?” 

I groaned, but you know I try… plus, this is different

“how is this any different? … it would be very great if I could depend on you to be here to commune with me every morning the way Tosin can almost bet that you won’t be able to get out of bed if his sms doesnt grace your phone… Its not just about your morning prayer, how much of our communion do you carry into the day with you?…How exposed to the day would you feel if u were to miss a morning of communion?…”

I felt quite ashamed at the end of our small chat.. But then that’s what my relationship with the Father is all about.

 I learn daily… One step forward, two steps back, 10 forward, pause …(until I am jolted ) and then I move again

Since that day, my song has been if your presence doesnt go with me, Lord I dont want to leave this place… its a much slower journey but its more satisfying.

There is nothing like stepping into a new day with God and spending the day hand in hand with Him.

He is a Faithful and Consistent God… how much of a dependable child are you?