In every child placed on this earth by the Divine hands of our Creator, there are plans and purposes for the originator of life to fulfil. The Almighty Creator is the writer of our stories. What He has authored, no human author can alter. One grave mistake many people have made is to look down on a fellow human being; especially a child they believe will amount to nothing in life.
This child may have been conceived in a shameful environment; and his birth may have taken place in a shanty; but the ultimate plans of our Creator have to be accomplished for Him to be proved to be the all-powerful whose voice is law that cannot be broken. Those who look down on others always forget that a rejected stone today can become the main Pillar of the House tomorrow.
It hurts when people in authority over you once believed you didn’t mean much, and would never amount to anything significant in life. Maybe, it was Daddy, Mummy, uncle, brother, sister, childhood friend, pastor, or your elementary school teacher. They might have spoken belittling words to you with so much audacity and authority as if they were God’s deputies. But they were wrong! Did you ever have that experience as a child or as an adult? Were you once counted out, disparaged, and demeaned? Was your life once played like a football in family politics?
Family politics is rampant among children who are born of the same parents, and among children who sucked from the same cistern of Mummy’s breasts. Have we not seen and heard stories where parents ignorantly but determinedly muffled the destiny of one child because of another that they favoured? Have we not seen and heard tales where parents, right from birth, picked up one child and assumed he or she was going to be the heir apparent to Daddy’s very vast wealth and Mummy’s acres of diamonds? Have we not seen where parents definitively set aside a particular position for a particular child to the neglect and abandonment of others?
Have we not seen and heard stories where parents believed that from birth one child would be the one that all other children would mill around and bow down to his or her star and serve for the rest of their lives? Have we not seen and heard where one child was never given one bit of a chance to exercise his potential when he or she was young, but instead deemed damned and doomed because of what some erring oracles and manipulating diviners told his parents? Have we not seen and heard true stories where the child who everybody thought would be a serf became the one that others eventually served? Have we not seen and heard that the smallest in the family became the greatest, and the most laughed-at ultimately laughed the best? Have we not seen and heard that many times, many parents have been flatly and dead wrong about the doomsday they thought awaited a particular child who later became the head of a nation?
If you have heard and seen these examples, then, you know the drift of this treatise. The warped thoughts of many parents about the chances of success of some of their own children and lack of chances thereof of others have destroyed what could have been a beautiful relationship between siblings and the entire family. The emotionally-hurt child however remembers every disparaging event towards him even if the occurrence was at a tender age. But no child is a failure, my friends. We are all creatures; not the Creator.
There was a time God wanted to pick a king in biblical Daddy Jesse’s house. Daddy Jesse, instead of putting everybody on a level playing field assumed a king would come from the ones that looked like kings. He paraded them one after the other, but did not mention David. In his human calculation, David did not have what it took to be the king. Fortunately for David and unfortunately for the miscalculating family members, in the house of Jesse, there was nobody who had all the gifts that were embedded in just David alone. He was a singer, a song writer, a maker of musical instruments, a fighter, a warrior, a winner, a king, and the only one God said He loved much as a man after His own heart. Daddy Jesse failed to acknowledge all these endowments packaged in one person! Parents could be wrong sometimes in their assessments of their children! Snippets of family politics played in many families are umpired unconsciously by parents. Daddy loves John more than he does Jack; and Mummy loves Jack more than she does John. From the get-go, a squabble for attention and supremacy begins between siblings. This squabble extends until the children become adults; and the one more beloved believes that he or she is the automatic heir apparent before whom everybody must genuflect.
For you, they may have thought that you would not amount to much in life. In siblings’ meetings, you are talked about, belittled, disparaged, and ridiculed. Daddy or Mummy may have already told them in evening-time folk stories that your David can’t be much in life. Looking down on a child is an episode he or she will never forget.
Those who thought you would probably end up a bum you ended up shocking the daylight out of. They begin to see you in places where they only wish for themselves. David is not a servant; David is king who carries what no one else carries.
Children have different personalities. Children aren’t the same. Some love sports, others don’t. Some are heavily into the books, some aren’t. some may tell you they want to be doctors or lawyers; some may not even have a clue what they want. But one day for all of them, it will all unravel and come together. You cannot use your children’s today to determine their tomorrow. All of them are equal before God. There is no heir apparent in my own household. All of them will build their thrones, not necessarily inherit mine. Children remain God’s heritage, not the parents’. If God is not playing politics with our children’s lives, parents have no right to play that dirty game.
Those who wrote you off yesterday are burying their faces in their hands today as they see you in your new glow and glory. Your haters expect to be giggling and laughing at you in derision today. But God’s love got you where you are. If you are not there yet, my friend, expect to get there. God’s love never runs out!
PUNCH
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