Faith was not just another word for me growing up, faith is what I do. I dare things beyond my size, pray for people with serious illnesses, telling them it's done even if nothing changes.
I have always thought, “If I ever meet the bad guys one day, I'll be to them as a God, raining fire on them yet with calmness. And if I meet another I'll send them on a jungle quest, a journey of no return.” It all depends on my mood that day. That was when the bible was my prompt.
But everything changed the year a girl my age was taken into captivity, despite refusing to bow or deny her faith in God. The world prayed for her and for her return, yet slowly, she was forgotten and her life became a shadow of what I had hoped it'd have been.
I never knew this event got to me until recently, when the news of terror that felt so far away became the order of the day in my area. On the other day's news it was my church member that was kidnapped and her father shot, barely surviving in the hospital. A few days later another similar case and another one and another until fear finally joined the group chat.
I still thought that I had that doggedness and faith I held so dear, until the bad guys raided a church not so far from mine on a Sunday morning. I saw soldiers coming out with guns, trying to save the rest of us.
My feet were cold beneath and refused to move to safety. I saw the aged who couldn't walk on a normal day crawling towards the altar, telling God, “Please if I'm coming home today it shouldn't be by slaughtering.” I was the only youth left in the church standing like a statue, unable to move or say a word of prayer. Just rooted there, sweating my life out.
I realized my uncertainty about dying for the Lord's course without His grace wrapping my faith. But the day I heard the news about the death of our youth pastor— it was a Sunday after Valentine's Day—I concluded that ‘the painful truth about life and death is inevitable.’ A statement I learnt from philosophers.
I was shown the video of how he was butchered like an animal on his way home after church service. His hands and legs were out of joint, his throat was slit open and his voicebox removed. I watched how his remains were packed into the sack to the mortuary some hours after. The memory haunted me for weeks. “Marvel,” he fondly called me, stressing the ‘vel’ more than usual. Who would have thought this was the type of death dangling over his head.
Maybe faith isn't just about taking the mountain, being outspoken or expelling fear. Maybe it's also about drinking the cup we prayed to pass over us. “Remember your creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come,” the Preacher counseled. Now, I know why. Because in the days of my youth I get to dig the well with the strength I was given so that when the evil days come, even with my strength gone, I can drink from that well.