MONDAY MORNING MEDITATION:By Ogbo Awoke Ogbo
The Wisdom Of The Planet
"Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next generation." ~ Joel 1:3
¶ Ojuolape, then only 11, asked me one of the smartest questions a young child ever asked me. I had gone to pick my son from school when she waylaid me. Her parents hadn't shown up to pick her.
“What can I do to become great?” she inquired.
'Lape is full of life, full of curiosity and genius for a child her age. Her pretty little eyes zoomed straight at my face, meaning, 'I'm waiting for a good answer.'
Caught by the suddenness of her query, I rambled through bits and pieces of the biographies of Mandela, Gandhi, Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr, Mother Teresa - the usual world greats. They dreamed. They believed. They fought. They loved. They persevered. They served.
••• Lape absorbed the tales but wasn’t done with me yet. She wasn’t letting me go like Jacob the Angel. She quickly strutted to her school bag and pulled up a long notebook. She showed me page after page of her intended inventions and dreams. I marveled at her genius!
She told me about all the things she made with paper at home. She told me that she wanted to become great through inventing something with her name on it.
“What do you do with your paper inventions at home?” I asked.
“My Mum throws them away!”
"Your mum throws them away?"
"Yes!"
••• What I am going to tell you next will take a long time to sink in. But if and when it does sink in, your experience of the earth will be different. God, in His infinite wisdom, didn't hide the wisdom of the planet in expensive metals such as gold, platinum or precious stones such as diamond and rubies. He didn't hide it in the elements as fire, thunder, wind or sea. Yes, you will find His glory and wisdom in all of creation but He hid the key to the planet's wisdom in children!
••• Here's what I have discovered: If you want to be wise, study children. Everything you need to become great is in them. Love them. Have them around you often. Hold conversations with them. You might be surprised.
When things turn awry, I turn to my children for ideas. Their thoughts are pure and free from the diplomatic garbages of adults. Their views are unbiased. Their suggestions are fearless. They come from a world in which nothing is impossible.
••• At this point, the brain scientists might be itching to remind me that their brains are not myelinated yet; their prefrontal cortex isn't fully matured. Their reality testing is zero. But that is the beauty. Reality is important but too much Reality is often the adult's undoing. Too much attention to Reality often paralyzes the adult and stifles his journey to greatness. But a child works from a place of trust. Your three-month old baby cares nothing about inflation or austerity or bad economy. When it is time to suck, it will suck.
"But Ogbo," you say, "didn't Scripture say that foolishness is in the heart of a child but a rod of correction drives it away?" Yes, flip over a few more pages for the balance of that text. "God chose the foolish things to confound the wise." "Out of the mouths of babes and suckling He ordained praise."
Jesus finally stamped it when He declared, "Let the little children come to Me. Don't stop them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as they!" He said, "Unless you repent and become as little children, you will not see the Kingdom of God!" How scary!
••• The wisdom of the planet begins with a dream, a clear picture of the heart's desire. The first question God asked Jeremiah when He called him into the prophetic vocation was, "What do you see?"
I can confidently prophesy that in 10 - 15 years' time, you will hear about a young Nigerian female inventor by the name of Ojuolape - if only Mum will stop throwing away her paper inventions! In the wisdom of the planet, the invisible realm is first born into the visible on paper. Paper and pencil are the maternity of great ideas. The mind blowing edifices of Dubai and Tokyo were first in the mind of the architect, then transmuted on paper before finally becoming 3-D bricks and steel.
••• Let me touch on a festering gangrene that has seized majority of the Nigerian youth. Sports betting! It wasn't until I went to the Computer Village three weeks ago that I realized the scale of this social infection. Nine out of ten people in the village were hooked on sports betting! It was so hard to get the attention of the IT store owner!
He had placed a bet of N250 the previous week and won N155,000! He turned to me and said, "Sir, what kind of business can give you that kind of return? That is why I can't stop!"
••• Well, by the wisdom of the planet, gambling, in whatever form, has never made a person rich. Two, gambling is addictive. It captures the same part of your brain as marijuana. Three, gambling only leads south. And four, gambling is not a career. You never learn any cognitive or employability skills from sports betting.
Unfortunately, they are compelled into this hopeless activity by a government that has no plan for their future. But really, that's no excuse for gambling. There are opportunities in agriculture but quick and easy money has always been the bane of the Nigerian youth.
••• Every great idea starts from a dream, a picture in the mind. Children dream. They believe. And they act on the image in their mind. In the wisdom of the planet, greatness begins as a seed of desire. I have been baffled by the apathy of majority of Nigerians to knowledge and competence. They'd spend N10,000 on fried chicken, N100,000 on a ticket to catch a glimpse of Kim Kardashian and N1,000,000 for a table at a comedy or musical show. But they will not spend N1,000 to buy a book!
••• Nigerian companies will gladly pay a comedian N1.5 million at their end-of-year party but only give a motivational speaker two bottles of Eva water, one bottle of Amstel Malta and two packs of Chivita juice! Nigeria will easily splash N5 million prize for a beauty pageant but N25,000 for a Mathematics competition. Geez … what a value system for progress!
••• One day, in a moment of discouragement, my wife put her arms around me and said words I haven't forgotten: "Sweetheart, the problem is not your content or your undying passion to uplift people. The problem is that you are exhausting yourself trying to help people who don't want help!"
••• Until a man or woman has that burning desire from within, don't waste energy investing in him. No matter your ability and giftedness, you can't lift a person who wants to stay down. Even Oga Jesus couldn't perform miracles at a certain town he went to preach. Why? The people didn't want!
••• This week, set yourself apart from the crowd. Capture your dream on paper. What top 12 things would you achieve to consider your life to have been fulfilling and memorable? Write then down. Then, set to work on your dream. Pay the price. In the wisdom of the planet, every dream has a price tag!
May God crown you with wisdom. Amen
I love you. Be healthy, wealthy and wise!

MONDAY MORNING MEDITATION: How to Know If You Have a Mere 3-Watt Soul (Part 1)
"And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." Philippians 1:6, ESV
¶ The common saying we utter in respect of the dead is, "May the soul of the departed rest in peace." It's quite understandable. No one wants the soul of a loved one to continue to wander in dark and arid places after being dismissed from the planet. Sadly, souls don't just rest in peace because we wish them so. Let's park it there for just today. I'll come back to it in Part 2.
Many times, complex problems have simple solutions. Just as God uses the foolish and immaterial to confound the wise and mighty. Example: A baby wails for hours. Babies don't tell you why they are crying. You have to figure it out by yourself.
So, the young, first-time mother is confused because she has tried everything in her level of awareness. Then, a veteran mother walks into the room, takes one look at the baby, turns to the young mum and says three words, "Change her nappy!"
One of the top three reasons greatness will continue to elude Nigeria and many other African countries is lack of closure. That's my simple explanation to a complex problem.
••• When a complex problem defies complex solutions, be assured that it has a simple solution. Boko haram, for instance has the simplest of solutions ever! Even a three year old knows it! But boko haram will last a while because the powers that be don't want it to go away. Surprise, surprise! Terror is an effective utility of power, if you know what I mean. Someone created ISIS, and someone created boko haram. And it might just never be whom the media has made you believe.
If we can answer only one question, thousands of lives will be spared the mindless boko murders. It is the same question that the CIA, KGB, Mossad, MI6 and other deadly effective intelligences have used to solve and create mysteries. The question never fails. Once you unravel the answer, you unravel the mystery. In just a minute, I'll tell you the magic question that will dissolve boko haram. The powers that be know, but they will continue to lie to feeble-minded sheeple.
••• Back to the issue of closure. Nigeria is a no-closure land! Let me offer just a few to sync your mind:
- Dele Giwa - no closure
- Bola Ige - no closure
- Harry Marshall - no closure
- Aluu Four - no closure
- Saro Wiwa - no closure
- MKO Abiola's death - no closure
- Oil windfall of IBB's time - no closure
- PTDF scams - no closure
- Odi massacre - no closure
- Biafran genocide - no closure
- Plateau State massacres - no closure
- Benue State villagers slaughtered by Fulani herdsmen - no closure
Internally-displaced peoples - no closure
- Uncountable extrajudicial killings by the police and military - no closure
- $400 billion allegedly stolen by powerful individuals since oil exploration began - no closure
- Boko haram killings - no closure
And so many more unsolved evils that the press isn't allowed to mention! Behind each agitation that threatens Nigeria is lack of closure. And with the current combination of boko haram, OPC, and Biafran revivalists, Nigeria is standing on its last nerve.
••• The foundation of unity and progress is closure! I am always amazed by America. Some things are still right about America. I am amazed how a murder that was committed in 1972 gets solved in 2002, forty years after. I am amazed how the murderer, who may have been 45 at the time is still apprehended and fully punished for his crime. He may have changed his name, done facial surgery, relocated to another country. But the FBI still gets him … even if it is sixty years later.
The unsolved blood file never remains closed for ever. Except in Africa. I have traveled through Europe and North America and discovered a few fundamental differences. One is the value for life!
Once while I traveled the US once, a five-year old girl, Samantha, was sexually molested and murdered by a man. Believe me, I watched all America shut down to hunt that pedophile. Everyone was involved! Value for life!
Down here in Africa, you are only a body. "Fifteen bodies were found floating in the Lagoon." "Police stray bullets hit three bodies.." No name, no nothing ... just 'bodies.'
In Europe you are a person. In Africa you are a body. During the September 11 terror attack memorial, every single name of the victims of the attack was read out, one-by-one. Because they were persons; they were not bodies. That, my friend, is no small difference between America and Africa!
••• So, you can thrive better in a land where you know the blood of your loved one will get justice no matter how long it took. I can only imagine the agony Aguyi Ironsi's widow has endured for nearly 50 years while her husband's killer walks around triumphantly boasting about it! The pain in the heart of Dele Giwa's children when they walk into their living room and see the picture frame of their father who was denied a respectable old age!
In other parts of the world, the path to jail leads to jail. In Nigeria, the path to jail leads to power. Go figure! Most people who should be in jail are in power!
••• I am even more stunned by Israel. Up to sixty years after the World War, they were still picking up the Nazi criminals one by one from the corners of the earth where they hid. They found a measure of justice, albeit small in comparison to the six million loved ones murdered by the Nazi. They vigorously pursued closure. Israel understands that if you don't close an evil cauldron, it will haunt unborn generations.
Closure puts a metal cap on evil. Closure robs evil of its power to happen again.
••• There is a big problem when God looks down from heaven and sees a land covered with blood crying out for closure! God told Cain, "The blood of your brother Abel is crying to Me for closure."
You think that the blood of poor Benue farmers slaughtered in their sleep and dispossessed of their ancestral farmlands has nothing to do with our political and economic woes? Well, continue to hire Harvard-trained economists and lick IMF's boots. They will save us from the cry of blood. They will give justice to the dead. They will cause the souls of many murdered for oil to rest in peace.
••• What can you walk out your door with this morning? What can you take to the bank this week? That you need closures in your personal life!
••• If you look back at your life and all you see is a string of abandoned projects, there is problem. You start things but never finish them. You begin a project, a new business, a new relationship … midway you abandon them. Not once, not twice, not thrice. But always. Trust me, all is not well. Your soul is running on only three watts!
I had that problem. I hope to share how I rid myself of the jinx of starting things and never finishing them. How my soul, through grace that Jesus gives, went from 3 watts to a whopping 10,000 and counting!
••• In the second part, Deo Volente, we will understand why the pursuit of closure is the gate to fulfillment and personal power. We will trust God to give us wisdom and insight to cure ourselves from the devastating affliction of planting and never harvesting, starting ideas and never bringing them to an effective closure.
Until then, I'll pause and say a prayer for you. God bless and keep you.
I love you and don't you ever forget to remain healthy, wealthy and wise!

MONDAY MORNING MEDITATION: How to Know If You Have a Mere 3-Watt Soul (Part 2)
"And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." Philippians 1:6, ESV
¶ If only wishes were horses, we can say vox populi, vox Dei in the matter of soul rest! The soul of the dead doesn't rest in peace just because thousands of friends wish them R.I.P on their Facebook page - which they don't read anyway. Check am na (speaking Pidgin)… if a soul hasn't found rest when it is alive, is it when it is dead?
"The soul that sins shall die," declares the maker of souls. "The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ." Romans 6:23
••• The problem of my soul and your soul is sin. But in His mercy, God has provided a way of escape for you and me. Not by doing good. Not by giving alms and helping the poor. Otherwise, Cornelius the Gentile would have made it effortlessly. The "Cornelius Foundation" touched lives, helped the poor, paid for medical researches to eradicate diseases, built churches, gave scholarships to indigent students, etc … but that didn't wipe away the sins of his soul. God still had to send Peter to introduce the gospel to his household. It was only after then that his philanthropy made sense in God's sight. I wish someone could forward Bill Gates this paragraph.
I don't know who started the RIP movement but I can tell you that he must be the deadliest mischief maker in history. Promising souls wholesale peace at death, regardless? Listen, soul peace after death is retail! If you have a loved one still alive, walk up to him right now and tell him "Aunty R.I.P" or "Uncle R.I.P!" She or he is likely to be horrified and scream, "Are you wishing me death!?" Before he starts screaming, "All my enemies fall and die now!" calm him down and show him Hebrews 9:27. He'll thank you later.
••• Jesus told the story of the dead who pleaded, "My loved ones are busy telling me RIP while I'm roasting in this horrible place. Please let me go back from here and warn them that it is a different world down here!"
To which Father Abraham responded, "If they don't listen to the preachers of the Gospel who are alive, they would never listen if someone rose from the dead and told them so." Haven't we witnessed many back-from-the-dead testimonies? Has the world believed yet? Nah!
Sin, guilt and shame keep a soul running on three watts. So, do your soul a favor and let it find closure in Christ. Read Matthew 11:28-30 to find out how.
••• Talking about closure, I promised to share from my own experience of release from the habit of leaving trails of unfinished businesses in my life's path. The worst personal affliction I ever suffered was neither the typhoid during my Youth Service in 1988 nor the sports accident that dislocated my left knee. It was my lack of staying power - sticking to something until I found closure.
First, imagine a woman, who is perpetually pregnant but doesn't have a baby. (Pregnancy without delivery is only permissible for men of beer.) But that was how it felt. After NYSC, I considered all kinds of businesses after I couldn't secure a job. Bottling fresh kunu … making groundnut oil … poultry farming … grasscutter farming … snail farming … lesson teaching … transport business and many more!
••• I started many of them but never brought any to completion! After buying the nylon sealing machine for packaging kunu and screen-printing thousands of nylon sachets, I abruptly abandoned the "kunu malt" business, gave away the machine and started pursuing goat-selling business!
I was constantly on the move, constantly pregnant with ideas, constantly working on something new and exciting. And of course, constantly broke! You see, the purpose of life is not eternal pregnancy. The ultimate purpose of life is eternal result. You are going to be rewarded for the fruit you produced, not by the flowers you fawned. I was the Ultimate Flower Man! Like many 'motivational speakers' and so-called 'youth empowerment' people out there … too many flowers, too little result.
••• Second, imagine a hunter who goes away from his family on a hunting expedition for two weeks. He returns and sits his wife and children by the fireside, reeling out tale after tale of the wonders of the forest … how he pursued antelopes, heroically fired at a zebra and missed… how he nearly caught a wild hog with bare hands… how a big bush rat bit his little finger… and so on.
At the end of the mesmerizing forest tales, what would be the one thing in the mind of wifey and childreny? "Daddy, so what is in the bag?"
••• I don't know about your family but mine doesn't eat tales. Even if my children eat tales, my wife won't. On our wedding day, I didn't promise her tales. "With my tales I shall feed thee…" Haha!
So, the first step to curing yourself from the affliction of starting and never finishing is to THINK RESULTS … always. Result orientation. I now live result-oriented life. Like God, every action of mine is purpose-oriented. I quit pursuing the new and exciting and started focusing on purpose and results.
••• Jesus said it succinctly, "This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples." He didn't say "bear flowers."
If your actions aren't purpose-oriented, forget closure. You set up yourself to become what the late Ziglar called a "wandering generality." What in the world are all those postgraduate degrees and certificates you're piling up for? Why are you studying Medicine? Because your parents want you to?
••• A second orientation that freed me was the discipline of finishing a project before even starting it. These days, I don't start a project until I have finished it - in my mind. I think the late Stephen Covey conveyed it as a principle of highly effective people: Begin with the end in view. I don't necessarily wait until I have seen the whole picture, but I would have experienced the project sufficiently in my physiology to intuit how it will end … or not end.
Does that mean that all my projects always succeed? Not at all. No honest human being is 100% accurate all the time. But it does mean that I have given each project every reasonable and unreasonable opportunity to succeed. I have faithfully poured my physical, mental and spiritual resources to make it happen. If it didn't, I can conclude without guilt and shame that it was not meant to be. Then, I add the experience to my wisdom bag. I then know what works and what doesn't work -- and I bring that insight into my Project Next.
••• Life seldom goes as you planned it but it can be hell when you have no plans, no purpose, no rallying principle of personal existence. Time fails me to tell you something about self efficacy. The greatest blessing of finishing what you started is self efficacy.
••• Self efficacy looks at the current problem -- financial, spiritual, emotional, relationship, whatever -- and says, "I can handle this just like I handled it in the past." "I am a completer; I can chew this." Self efficacy was what David invoked when he confronted Goliath the butcher. David said to himself, "I tore a bear with bare hands; I killed a lion single-handedly; I can handle this smug!" And he did.
••• Not completing what you started robs you of confidence to face future challenges. Your mind stalls. It says, "You haven't finished Project A, what makes you think you can successfully take up this new one?"
This is already getting long. I haven't even broached praxis, or visualization, or energy/attention management, or what I heard Jim Collins describe as the "curse of competence." I will design a coaching exercise in the new year for people interested in internalizing the discipline of finishing what they start. But permit me to mention just one more key before we wind it up.
It is impossible to make progress in your life if you are not a finisher!
••• There are six major mind problems in people who suffer the habit of never finishing what they begin.
1. Lack of clarity.
2. Inherited fear
3. Short term thinking
4. Restlessness and anxiety.
5. A people, fame-seeking pleasing mind.
6. Being in a hurry to succeed.
Let me broach the last and we wind up.
••• I sense a lot of restlessness among the young people of this generation. Everyone appears to be in a hurry to "make it." And most will kill, do "money sacrificial rituals" or anything immoral to make money and buy jeep. Young people are pursuing the shallow shiny objects propagated in Nigerian music videos - women, expensive cars, money. Three-watt souls!
••• Becoming financially free (for instance) is not a one-year goal. Give yourself the same gift that God has already given you: TIME! Install the long term view.
One of my mentors once told me, "Ogbo, 25 years is enough time for anyone in any country to become financially independent." Give yourself time - that's the way the earth was ordained.
God bless and keep you this week. May your soul find peace now you're alive.
I love you. Be healthy, Healthy Wealthy and Wise on STV

MORNING MEDITATION: You're Leaning On Cobweb, Einstein! "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding." ~ Proverbs 3:5, ESV ¶ Did you know that from the 1960s or even earlier, all Nigeria's infrastructure, including the Universities of Nigeria and Ibadan, the oil refineries, roads, electricity, etc., were funded entirely from the groundnut pyramids of Northern Nigeria? And did you know that Nigeria's oil is formed in the North (The Oil Kitchen), then flows underground from there to the Niger Delta? Therefore, the oil belongs to the North! (If you believed what you just read above, you're a victim. Read on.) You will be shocked by the millions of Nigerians, especially our Northern brethren, who tenaciously hold onto the two statements above as infallible truth. The person who made those assertions is a university graduate! I thought he was joking until I realized he was ready to wage a jihad on those claims! ••• I've touched a sensitive nerve but I just wanted to curate a snippet of the mystery of the human mind. More mysterious to me is how easily public opinion can be manipulated by the elite few who have mastered the science of mind shaping. Social contagion is the most powerful force in politics, business and religion! Propaganda is a thousand times stronger and faster than truth. But here is the difference between propaganda and truth. When propaganda settles, disillusionment follows. However, propaganda can be so strong and self replicating that even after it settles, people continue to make excuses for their disenfranchisement. Propaganda heats the frog in the pan so slowly it doesn't notice until the inevitable. Truth sets free. Propaganda doesn't. ••• The Bible is a book of contrasts -- which many mistake for contradiction. Some place, it says, "Sell everything you have and acquire understanding…"; at another, "Do not lean on your own understanding." At one place, it says, "Don't be as a mule without understanding" and yet our meditation verse says we should not lean on our own understanding. What is going on? Nothing. There's no contradiction. Except if you're the type that would believe that the oil in Saudi Arabia belongs to your grandfather because his initials were S.A. Now, the greatest tragedy of the human race is that if a lie is told long enough, people actually start believing it's true. It's used in marketing. The fruit juice packaging says, "No sugar, no preservative, no artificial color." People believe it and start buying and drinking. Years later, they lie incapacitated in the hospital bed, peering on the ceiling and wondering where their diabetes came from. Then a prophet reveals the answer to them: "Witches and wizards! Arrows from the village!" ••• Politicians also use it perfectly. The media are masters of opinion manipulation. They keep showing the same perspective over and over until we start believing that an evil candidate is a messiah and that a good one was a demon. It is even worse and more deadly in religion. Millions of people are blindly following men and women who are clearly leading them to hell! They have dangerously and willingly surrendered their precious minds to the control of another human being instead of to God and His Word. ••• Nevertheless, let me back up a little. The word- belief-action cycle was not supposed to be a tragedy. That's how the Almighty God designed you and me - to use our words to create our reality. Your words have atomic power! You can change your current circumstances with your words! And it is likely you are where you are today because of the hurtful words you have consistently used on yourself. Every word from your tongue is an incantation for or against your destiny. So, an insignificant 12-year old boy starts telling himself that he is the greatest. No one notices. He says it a little bit more. Still, no one notices. Then he says it yet a little more. Then, ten years later, the world eventually echoed, "Yes, you are the greatest!" Since then, the world still tells Muhammad Ali, "Yes, you are the greatest!" At 73 years of age, Ali still appears on the cover of Sports Illustrated. ••• Ali had accidently tapped into one of the greatest secrets of the universe - that we can create or destroy our destinies with our own words. If you keep telling yourself that you are dumb, who is Satan to challenge that? If you keep calling yourself poor and hopeless, who has the authority to counter your own self sentencing? This was why God counseled, "Let the weak say, 'I am strong. Let the poor say I am rich.'" Some spiritual things don't make sense but they work as designed. ••• Why should you be wary of your own judgments? Because beliefs create realities and shape destiny. The easiest way to destroy a people without firing a rifle is to supply them with a poisoned belief. That's how Europe destroyed post colonial Africa. Africans were lied to -- that they were the cursed descendants of Noah. They are not intellectually capable to organize, to innovate, to invent, to self govern. And that belief became our overriding reality. Today, we marvel at the incredible sloppiness of the black race. Until we buy back the truth about ourselves; until we start believing right about our equal heritage in the human race, no amount of religion or foreign aid will save Africa from its blight of darkness, ignorance and poverty. God, why is a continent so richly endowed so backward and dependent?! ••• We must apply our understanding but then we must be aware of the sabotaging effects of our thinking errors. For example, how did you come to the belief that the Igbo man is a money lover? How did you come to the belief that Yoruba people are dirty? How did you come to the belief that Hausa people are dumb? How did you come to the belief that Calabar women consume lots of dog meat and are perfect bedroom machines? You don't know. Those thoughts were not originally yours. It's true that environment and culture might seem to shape a people's attitudes and preferences but it is more accurate and mature to treat every individual on his or her merit. ••• I have met Igbo men who would rather die than take a bribe or cheat a client. My Yoruba friends are smartly dressed, clean and cosmopolitan. I schooled with a few Hausa students who gleaned many academic prizes. The Calabar woman part, I am limited by my single story since my wife isn't Calabar and sampling is forbidden. Stereotyping is the commonest thinking flaw. Those calcified beliefs subconsciously color or even poison your attitudes towards people from these cultures. ••• Again, why should we be wary of our judgment on matters? Because of what Daniel Kanneman described as "intuition bias" in his classic book "Thinking, Fast and Slow." As a young bachelor, I had intuited a succession of pretty sisters as my would-be wives. Yet the girl I finally ended up with had been completely absent in my consciousness until just a few minutes to my getting married. It was the proverbial love at first sight. Where had she been all along? The last thing you want to rely entirely on your own judgment is the issue of marriage! She might not be what you think! And he might be a beast in soft skin until you say, "I do." "Therefore, in all your ways, acknowledge the LORD," said King Solomon, "And He will direct your paths." As we acknowledge Him this week, may He direct our paths to what is best for us. Amen. I love you. Be healthy, wealthy and wise!

this ycons concept am located surulere, Lagos I delivered worldwide you can reach me through WhatsApp, or call me

*√MONDAY MORNING MEDITATION: Was the 'Good Samaritan' in Jesus' Parable a Dangerous Witch in Disguise?*

_Copyrights © 2017 by Ogbo Awoke Ogbo_

*_“Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” ~Galatians 6:2 KJV_*

“Don’t worry, Junior,” he nudged his little boy. “Go ahead and greet uncle. He will not give you groundnuts again!”

My head whirled, trying to make sense of what this brother in Christ was saying. I was completely lost, trying not to think what I thought I should be thinking that he thought.

••• Then, we went to their church the next day. They had invited us to begin attending their church when we moved into the area. And we thought we loved it. _(Until…)_

My wife and I sat in front. As soon as the pastor mounted the pulpit, he read Galatians 3:1: “O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you…”

Then he began: “Some of you here bewitch others. Spiritual enemies! You give others ‘spiritual’ groundnuts to harm them! God will fight you…!”

Well, I kind of started the story from the middle. It’s one exciting piece of my life’s many stories. Let me back up a bit:

••• We moved to Ibadan in 1996, just a few months after our wedding in December 1995. The move was occasioned by my postgraduate studies at the University of Ibadan. We made friends quickly in the neighborhood. I’m a born connector. And we were particularly excited to meet this lovely Christian family who had reached out to us. Everything was storybook exciting. _(Until…)_

Things were extremely difficult, financially, at the time. So, we occasionally received lifeline from relatives who would visit with foodstuff and farm goodies. On one of those occasions, my wife’s sister visited and brought, among other food items, fresh groundnuts. Joyfully, in keeping with our family tradition, we shared these items with our neighbors. We cooked and ate much of it, as you would imagine.

For some reason, this particular family … I still do not know what happened … the time we shared the groundnuts happened to be just when they decided to fall sick! And the immediate linkage was… well, you guessed it ... the groundnuts! We had used the groundnuts to attack their family by witchcraft!

It was during the weekend we went to visit them and I reached out to his little son that the conversation you read earlier ensued.

Trust died. Freedom to relate died with it. They fizzled out of our lives till today. Thankfully.

••• At another time, in my younger days, I drove through a narrow roadside fruit and vegetable market in a certain village. I had the humungous and intimidating brand new SUV - Nissan Armada. As carefully and slowly as I drove, I still knocked down an old woman’s tray of mango fruits.

I felt so saddened to have done this. These people were dirt poor. That tray of mangoes could have been the woman’s only chance to feed her family. The total worth of her merchandise could have been no more than N20-40 (about 25-50 cents at the time).

I parked the car and walked back. I wanted to pay her for all the mangoes in her tray. I brought out some cash and offered the woman but I was not ready for what happened next! She fled from me, shouting, “I cannot take your money o! You want to use me for money rituals! God forbid! I cannot take your money o! Get away from me, money ritualist!”

I was terribly embarrassed. And the fact that no one else came to my rescue or tried to persuade the woman to take the money meant that the crowd also believed what she believed.

••• So for me, that sad day began… when I can no longer share freely with neighbors unless the Lord literally forces me. You never know what coincidences would occur - and your act of kindness becomes witchcraft.

This next one is more recent, and I’m done:

You see, I am not a fan of fried rice and chicken. I hardly touch chicken unless it is the local free-range. So, about three weeks ago, at an event I facilitated, I was offered a take-away pack of fried rice and chicken. I did not eat it but I did not want to waste it either. I thought that someone - maybe one of the many hungry gatemen in the neighborhood - might need it.

When I drove into the estate, fear of being accused of bewitching did not allow me to give it to anyone. Who did this to us, Africa?

My wife, not a fan of fried rice either, kept the expensive food in the fridge, wondering who might want it. Story short, after a couple of days, she tossed the pack into the trash bin.

••• What’s the point?

Last Friday, as my wife and I took our morning walk within the neighborhood, we wondered, house after house, who the people behind the walls were and what they looked like. We’ve been in this gated estate for eleven years but we have no idea who our next door neighbor is. They do not know us either.

The worst is, you can’t even reach out to know your neighbors if you wanted to. The no-nonsense Rottweilers at some gates, the protocols, the what’s-your-business-pokenosing-around-here look you’ll get… you might as well face your own life. You already have enough hustle.

Now, I could meet these “neighbors” at London Heathrow, Johannesburg’s Oliver Thambo or New York’s JFK and have no idea that they lived right next to me in the estate!

*This is the sad narrative of modern humanity, modern communities, families, and local churches. Broken koinonia. Broken social connections. Zero bonding.*

••• One beautiful, very educated, single lady that I know is living like a tramp. Their retired father has houses and land. Her brothers are very well to do. But she is totally abandoned. I can’t describe it to you ... it’s pathetic! Her own brothers physically threw her things out of their father’s house - that they want to rent it out!

Breakdown of relationships in families is scary! Many siblings are not in talking terms! I was shocked when I met a guy who hadn’t spoken to his brother in four years - and they’re all in the same Lagos! There was nothing to discus, he said.

Some siblings are immersed in deadly court battles over sharing their dead parents’ estate. I still can’t figure how people who came out from the same womb, sucked the same breast, ate from the same kitchen, could harbor such deadly malice against themselves! And many of them are church-goers!

••• A friend of mine in Abuja narrated how his own blood brother would visit his home and refuse to eat in the house - for fear of being “poisoned” or used for rituals by his brother.

As you may have already noticed, the enemy-based fall-and-die spirituality of today’s churches have not helped matters. In every corner, we have prophets, pastors and “men of god” whose only message is “Someone is after your life! Your uncle wants to kill you!”

*The degree of suffering in the world today is the degree of our human disconnectedness. Man was never designed to be just self focused. We were designed to thrive by bearing one another’s burden.* Too many people are left bearing their burden alone - sickness, poverty, depression, family troubles, failure.

The law of Christ is fulfilled ONLY when we bear one another’s burden. If this is not happening in your family, Christ isn’t in it. If it is not happening in your community or local church, Jesus isn’t there.

••• Humanity’s problem is not lack of technology. It’s not politics, economy, global warming, weather events, wars, threats of nuclear war, the Middle East, religion, or terrorism. ALL of humanity’s problems have one root: broken fellowship. Not loving our neighbor as we love ourselves. Not bearing one another’s burden.

The “Parable of the Good Samaritan” remains the pillar of transformation for any person, family, community, local church or nation. Its message will continue to haunt the world burdened by cruelty, selfishness and greed.

There are millions of people going through hell who never should have if only their family, community or church reached out to them.
Are you one of them? I’m praying for you…today.

*Be healthy, wealthy and wise!*