Friday, 6:30am and I was up. I wondered for a minute why it was so. It was pretty unusual for my lifestyle; moreover, yesterday had been a busy day. I had stayed up on my feet for over 10 hours, and had logged in nothing less than 100 minutes of phone calls. It wasn’t an enviable day. Thankfully, it had ended.
You know how you work so hard in the day, and look forward to the time when you get home and have that fine time on your bed. Sometimes, it doesn’t happen as another set of dos obviate the need to sleep as early as anticipated.
Such was my Valentine’s Day. My friend teased me for not taking any lady out on a date.
“There will be many more Valentine days,” I had told him.
Finally, I retired to bed at 3am, or later than that. Something my doctor advised never to do.
Normally, when I get up unusually early – which is very rare, of course, I begin to do something immediately to make sure I redeem the time, but today, I was not in a hurry to do so. I thought through the decisions of yesterday and observed areas I could have spoken better, reiterating to myself the need to be tacit in responding to certain situations.
At 6:50am, the moment of epiphany came. I realized why I was awake. It came to me. I wasn’t really thinking of it, but it just came to me. When it did, I was humbled.
Nothing humbles like vision, but even more humbling is the realization that it is you who must do a particular something.
Very often we pray to God: ‘Lord, I know that I am in this world, in this university, in this country for a particular purpose; show me that purpose and enable me to achieve it.’
Do you not expect to get answers to your prayers? For God indeed answers prayers offered out of a sincere heart.
And he had answered mine. After listening to Daddy W.F. Kumuyi where he hammered on the fact that we must engage in active daily teaching of the Word, wherever we find ourselves, the Lord opened my eyes to one of my heart-cries – to have the Christians in my dorm do regular morning devotion together, or at least create opportunity and raise the awareness for persons who might think it valuable.
As God would have it, one of the guys with whom we did a test run last year, even though we stopped, partly due to his lethargy, and partly due to my non-insistence, lack of persuasion, perseverance and packedschedule, had come around to my room in the evening, and we had agreed to meet this morning. Guess at what time – 7am.
By the time my spirit had gotten me up, I was oblivious of the reason for such early rising. “Was I already becoming a proper, organized man?” I asked myself.
Upon realization of that humbling fact, I ran up to his room after saying some prayers and glancing through the material we would use for a quick devotion, in the event that he was ready to meet.
Sadly, his “make-we-see; I-go-try” – meaning, “let’s see, I’ll try” – yesterday did not deliver as his door was firmly bolted as at 6:56am. I knocked and knocked, and like we say in pidgin, “for where!”
While in front of his door, for we all live in a big dorm – a hall, if you will – with corridors separating opposite rooms, I observed that persons of the other faith were also moving in a united fashion to one of the common rooms to say their morning prayer. It was very inspiring. People flocked in from their rooms and we exchanged pleasantries as we crossed paths. What a way to be dedicated to one’s faith.
A big lesson I learned this morning, and I will do another something to see that God revives our spirit of morning devotion, so that we can spend time to pray for ourselves, our loved ones – saved and unsaved, the nation, our church, and if for nothing else, just to thank God for being alive and keeping us healthy. It is feasible by God’s grace, “for it is God who worketh in us both to will and to do according to his good pleasure.” I am beginning to like that verse by the way.
Let us all wake up from our slumber. Time is ticking away; don’t pass through that environment without that environment knowing that a spirit-filled someone was there, and that someone did something!
Of course, his not coming for the planned meeting did not dampen my enthusiasm. I did my devotion – for which there is a special blessing when done early in the morning, I think – and still found time to write a few more quotes for the walls in my room, which you can see displayed in the picture above – and most importantly, wrote this article to help you and me keep our eyes on the ball.
7am will and must remain a special time for me. So help me God!
– @ikeamadi
P.S. I just checked my wrist-watch, and it is 8:20am!
