The power of a smile

His name was John but I didn’t know that prior to the conversation. At first he was just another random classmate who is slightly older than the rest of us and he always made the corniest jokes…he was maybe in his early 40s or maybe life just made him look older. Either way I judged him based on his age and the way he looked.
today was just another random day in anatomy class. We were dissecting a pig and I’m pretty sure everyone just wanted to get the heck out of there as fast as possible. I was in line to get a look at some part of the cut up pig and John was in front me. He turned around and said, “nice shirt…are you a Christian?” and I said, “yes”. I was wearing a black shirt that read, “KNOW CHRIST KNOW PEACE.”
* John preceded to telling me his story…this is what I recall to the best of my knowledge:
” I used to go to church once upon a time and I stopped… I was at a very low point in my life and nothing seemed to be working out so my wife and I decided to move down here (Austin). It wasn’t a smooth transition as we hoped it’d be instead we’re out of jobs and I have to come back to school to get a better degree. The past few months has been the worst..I entered into depression and I tried to kill myself so many times and it never seemed to work. This morning I was driving to school and I tuned into a Christian radio station and I remember asking myself, “why me God?…is there really a God out there?….why am I going through all these” and that was when this song came on (Come to Jesus by Chris Rice) and I felt like it was speaking to me. I started singing and crying….and here you are listening to my story with a smile on face and it gives me hope because if you’re willing to listen to me then God is willing to do so much more for me. Thank you for smiling at me today and don’t ever stop smiling”
I learned two or three things that day: 1) John was a good person…who’s just going through the challenges of life, 2) John said he was going to go back to attending church and 3) always have a smile on your face no matter what you’re going through because you never know who’s life you’re going to save and 4) don’t judge a book by it’s cover :)

That's My King: Do You Know Him?

Hands down ---> best sermon I've ever heard.

The man by the canal

“A thousand may fall at your sides, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. You will only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked.” - Psalms 91:7-8
There are times when I read stories in the Bible and I feel like, “man, I can’t relate to any of these” but a few days ago I read the Bible verse above (Psalms 91:7-8) and it triggered a memory:
On January 27, 2002 in Lagos, Nigeria, three days before my twelfth birthday. I remember vividly what I was doing that fateful day when I felt the first shake and heard the first sound. The first two sounds didn’t faze me because I thought some idiot was playing there music too loud. Yeah that doesn’t really make any sense…oh well…
A lot of people fled their homes that fateful evening and I was amongst them. All members of my family separated during the chaos: my grandma, male cousin and aunt went their separate ways, and it was just my female cousin and I. We didn’t know what was really happening and nobody wanted to stick around to find out. Electric poles, building and trees were falling down. People emerged from different directions. Our goal was to get as far away as possible from the fire and the blast.

The two way street……
We got to a two way street: the road on the left leads to the highway to…God knows where, and the road on the right covered with overgrown grass also leads to the highway but it’s a bit of a shortcut & it’s faster. If we’re going to get to our destination faster then we better take the road on the right so we headed towards it only to stop dead at our track because there was a man standing there. He stood there staring at us in a cold-like manner as people pushed past him. The first thought that came to our mind was, “oh my God he is going to kill us….don’t get any closer”… and we didn’t instead we took the road on the left.

The Aftermath….
It would be a day later at a friend’s house in another city that we would find out that the whole chaos from the previous day was caused my bombs at a military cantonment.The explosion is said to be an accidental denotation of military explosive in a storage facility.
The road on the right where the strange man was standing was indeed an concealed canal that has been dominated my overgrown grass. And in this same canal more than 1,000 people died and more than 2,000 were wounded that day. We could have been one of the canal causalities if it wasn’t for the strange man standing by the canal.
Its been ten years since this incidence occurred and I can’t help but wonder why i never realized that the man by the canal wasn’t just someone who was interested in our blood, but someone sent there to save our life. Call me crazy but I think that man was an angel of God and you might wonder why he didn’t stop the others from going through that canal…I honestly don’t have an answer for that.
on a side note: the city we ran to that night would take approximately two different buses and approximately three hours to get there. The people that walked through the canal didn’t notice that the other people were sinking or weren’t making it across all because of fear. The spirit of fear can cause us to do irrational things.

(to be contd….)

Females: they do bite

I like to think of myself as an audience - merely sitting down amongst the crowd and just observing everything around me. My recent observation has been about girls and all the glory of their behaviors. I have seen and heard a girl tell a story in two different ways, depending on the circumstance she finds herself in.
Don't ever allow yourself to fall a victim of a woman's scorn. Most women derive their joy from destroying the life of their fellow female. A girl would never have a disagreement with a fellow girl and forget about it the next day. There always has to be some sort of drama involved and someone always has to be a winner.
Do not burn a woman and not expect to be burnt back.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

- Maryanne Williamson

#truth

I know what pain is