LOOK AGAIN, SEE!

Hello there dear gist partner. 

How are you doing today? How’s the new month going for you? Here’s hoping that this new month is filled with direction for you. 

Welcome to today’s gist. 

I am reading Karen Kingsbury’s This side of Heaven and there’s something that has been clanging in my heart and I thought to share, please stay with me. 

Josh had it all together in the beginning years of his life, younger brother and best friend to his 2 years older sister, loving and supportive parents and, later on, a devoted girlfriend. However, he would go on to make a series of bad choices that would cost him his girlfriend, make him leave his faith and relationship with God and generally just get him in a very bad place. A lot of things happen to Josh, including getting hit by a drunk driver in an attempt to save the lives of 2 teenage girls, an accident that cost him his back and his job. His parents were ashamed of him, his family became somewhat dismissive of anything that concerned him, so while they still continued to care for him and be there for him, they had zero expectations of him being anything but little better than a colossal failure. 

Then one fateful morning, they receive the call that Josh had died in his sleep the night before. Never mind their disappointment in the path he had chosen for himself, Josh was still blood and they loved him, so their grief knew no bounds and it didn’t seem like anything worse could happen. 

They were wrong. 

After Josh’s burial, they go to pack up his things and empty his apartment, there they were faced with a very sad truth: they didn’t know Josh at all! His life in the last years of his life was something they had, at best, little idea of. Each day they went to clear his stuff out, they were met with evidence of Josh’s true nature and the strength of his character, his renewed relationship with God, and with each new revelation, they hearts were pierced anew, with guilt over how dismissive they had been about Josh and the things that meant anything to him, and how little they had made him feel, sorrow over the years lost because none of them could get over their ideas of how they wanted Josh’s life to be to look at him how he really was, grief immeasurable because they wouldn’t get the chance to let him see how proud they now were of him (you should read the book). 

As I journeyed with his family through their mountainous grief, I realized something: I could see myself in their actions and how they treated Josh while he was alive. Even as I read. I thought of the people who I didn’t exactly rate, people who I have dismissed already because they haven’t, my general standards, attained certain feats, some of them have made bad decisions and, like Josh’s family, I have been unable to see the person they are now, seeing only who they used to be, deceiving myself that I am being realistic while in actual fact, I am being narrow minded. 

As this conviction pierced my heart, I remembered something I had heard someone say: “God has taken me to Canaan, don’t be stuck in my desert, I have left there.” And that’s really how we operate isn’t it, continuously judging people for their past, holding on to it so closely that we become blind to their present and their future. And you know what? This attitude robs everyone concerned, it denies you the opportunity to get to know this person as they are now and form a connection with them, it denies them the opportunity of a more cordial relationship with you. So really, nobody benefits from you having your head so highly stuck in the clouds that tou fail to relate with mortals like you, come down from your high horse! You must be willing, at every point in time, to relate with people where they’re at, not where you think they should be; their pace may be slower than you’d like, let them grow in that pace, they may not be as ambitious as you are, encourage them in the “small” endeavors, they do not have the abilities you do, help them hone the ones they do have, because love that waits to be shown when the person has met criteria isn’t really love now is it? After all, God demonstrated His own love to us in that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Jesus didn’t wait until you had decided to get your act together before He decided to pay the price for you, He did it while you still lived in sin! Love after all doesn’t insist on its own way (1 Corinthians 13:5b) rather it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:7). 

Am I saying you should indulge people in their bad behaviors? No. What I am saying is that let your love be fixed on the person not on the idea of them that you have created, help them be better, love them while they find their way, always remember to meet them where they are in their journey, not where they’ve been or where you think they should be. 

May God help us to see people around us truly. 

TUNES a AND THOUGHTS: the song that has been almost consistently on repeat in my playlist has been ‘Oluwatosin’ by Tkeyz featuring SteveHills. The phrase “Oluwatosin” translates to “God is enough”.  This really is the summation of our life, let the fact that you have God be enough for you. You might now have it all together, but the fact that you have God should be enough for you because having God is having all that really matters. Do you know God is like onions? As you stay with Him, tou will keep finding new layers of who He is and you will continue in your discovery like that till you leave this world, that’s why He is both journey and destination, because once you have Him, you have arrived on one hand and, on the other hand, He will take you where you need to be. I pray that this song blesses your heart and that you never forget how rich your life is because you have Jesus and “Oluwatosin!”

Audiomack: https://audiomack.com/TKEYZ/song/oluwatosin-jesus-is-enough?share-user-id=140072136 

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/484AckgGJtpi0hVPnIjy8k?si=eH7mplZFR6KCnfda-SnqYg 

YouTube music: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=g2U65UIuDQ4&si=ynkX54fr_09v0nDM 

Well, that is that about that as far as that is concerned, see you next week.

Love, 

Achenyo.