ABROAD (Where to find exactly what you seek)

ABROAD

                                                       (Where to find exactly what you seek)

I remember as kids, we used to feel elated whenever we hear the news of a returning relative from “abroad” as we often called it. To us as little kids the word “abroad” was synonymous to The United states of America or The United kingdom… this was of course because these were the only places where we had relatives that often returned.

Surely, you would want to know why we were so excited about the return of any of our “abroad” relatives. Well, the truth is that we often loved what they brought with them; Candy was usually the top of our list. Often they would bring clothes, used clothes sometimes and new ones other times and it was just always a great pleasure to receive presents from abroad.

I remember wondering if the “snickers” chocolate bar was made by angels in heaven and then sent down to “abroad” from whence it thence descended unto us in our low estate. The taste was heavenly and it soon became the major motivation I had for wanting to go abroad. I would bite off a chunk and then put the rest in the fridge while I went away grinning from ear to ear and savoring the heavenly taste in my mouth. M&M’s were another revelation to me… How in the world were these things made?? Lord they were delicious!!

I can also remember how I used to don my abroad outfits and I would have a certain new touch to my swagger when I walked the streets… I expected that everyone who saw me realized that these weren’t ordinary clothes… these were from abroad!! I remember a cousin of mine sending me a phone…or rather sending my elder brother a phone he had used, my brother used it and soon passed it down to me and I still treasured and bragged about a fairly misused phone as though it dropped from heaven… well, there was no difference between heaven and abroad anyway.

Maybe you grew up in a home with the fridge stocked with candy bars and with a wine cellar underground and you had separate wardrobes for your shoes, I wish I had, but I didn’t and I do not regret that either, but my point is apt and I am sure that among the large number of my readers (It’s called faith) many had the same experiences too.

Well, let me tell you what we failed to realize; we failed to realize that the Snickers chocolate bar and M&M’s were sold in the super mart down the road and that they were made by the same company and were of the same quality, we failed to realize that no matter how “abroad” our clothes looked to us, to every other person on the road, they looked exactly like what they were; Clothes and nothing more and that they were readily available in the market.

Ok… I promise I have a point other than my profound love for snickers, so I will stop the dallying and cut to the chase.

How many times have we been just as childish as I was without knowing it? Many times! You see often times we have totally missed the things around us and within us, because in our mind’s eye we were looking for something more “glorious” to come from somewhere else or from someone else… we pray many prayers that God has already answered, but we have failed to recognize the answers because they were disguised in the guise of the familiar. Someone has been praying for a wife or a husband, while actively rejecting or ignoring the young man or woman beside them who has been their friend for a long time, because their ideal partner had to be way cooler and they were looking yonder to his/her arrival from “abroad”

Many others are crying out for that dream job that will finally pay them millions and set them on their way to world domination, so they have a bookmark to “nairaland”, “Naijajobseekers” and “Jobberman.com” on their phones and their CV’s have touched the 36 states of Nigeria, plus all the Local governments… many Akara sellers have been blessed by their abundant supply of papers for wrapping their merchandise, yet these ones have a powerful talent to sing or write or a skill to sew or talk or perhaps humur worth paying for or a gift to make one thing or the other, but C’mon!! they are graduates!! They need something more “abroad” to fit their status.

Everyone upon the face of the earth has so much within them that if they were to explore, they would not have touched it all by the time they die. God designed us to be self-sustaining while also being interdependent. The place of your fulfillment is not where the most is given to you; it is the place where the most is brought out of you. Sure it could be in a high paying job, but what if it is not? Sure it could be in that lady you drool over and that guy that makes your breathing hasten… but what if it is not? It is a foolish and irresponsible man that imports what he can get from the next door store.

You get my point? You see Christ was to those in Nazareth, just “the son of Joseph the carpenter” and they sent him away from the town (Luke 4:29) and to those elsewhere in Capernaum, he was an astonishingly wise and powerful man and they couldn’t bear to watch him leave (Luke 4:42)… Let me show you how Christ himself put it…

“Truly I tell you… no prophet is accepted in his hometown”(Luke 4:24)

Many in his time missed the savior because He was familiar and many in our time still reject him and stay unsaved, while looking for fulfillment in other things than the one right in front of them. In like manner many of us have missed exactly what we are looking for because of the cloak of familiarity it wears and how common it looks. We see in our mind’s eye something so wonderful… so we seek it from abroad, but the truth is that if our eyes were open and not glued shut, we would never overlook our talents, our gifting, our humour, our passion, our intelligence, our wit, our skills our intuition, our silly ideas, our childhood dreams, our faithful friends, the girl who is a secretary in the office, the guy who is training himself in his master’s program and living in a room… we will perhaps look within and around us because, I have found that home cooked food is still always better than a thousand snicker bars… one caused me to lose two teeth.

So start living and stop waiting… challenge yourself, dare something! Push the limits and always ask yourself what you can do. Listen to God… he will reveal what he has put in you… then life will make so much more sense.

On that note dear friends, I will leave you to think…

That’s some truth on truthoscope!!

VACSAMMZ