This is about me, but this is not about me. This is about me because, I mean, this is my story. This is not about me because this can be your story, if you claim it. How do you see 2024?
Willy nilly, 2024 for me has been a great year. 2025 shall be a greater year. That must be some exciting news, I know, but hold yourself because, you see, 2025 is still well over half a month away. Rather than waste time in anticipatory celebration over something you may not see, why not spend that same time in appreciation and on evaluation of something you experienced.
Therefore, even if you can’t, please take a glass of something (not a bottle of understanding o); any other something you like and place on a writing table. Take also, a pen and a piece of paper. Pull the seat and take it. Relax, free your mind; we are about to take stock so we better ready for next year.
What manner of year has this been? Did it treat you well? Did you like it? Did you make mistakes that haunt you?
Did you allow even one person take advantage of you successfully? Did you make God too small in your eyes? Did you prefer man to God? Did you trust man over God?
Did you yourself play God at any point of this receding year? Did you maltreat people? Did you hate someone because of some unverifiable inanities another said? Did you tell your own blood that you don’t trust them?
Did you hurt over nothing? Did you shame God the way you begged Satan for bread? Did you give up because of delay or frustration, or both? Did you defect to Team Satan because God took eternity by your reckoning to show up?
Above all, and looking at the brighter side of things, did you preach Christ? Did you spread the Word especially out of your comfort zone? Did you help mankind sans seeking something in return? Did you do good to the poorest of the poor purely as on to the Lord?
For me, having honestly fielded the aforementioned battery satisfactorily, I can say for sure that 2024 has been an excellent year. God has opened doors I never to thought possible even as the incurable optimist that I am. God used people I never could have guessed. Stop looking at me like that or thinking that mine is so good.
The truth is that your 2024 might even be better. The difference is that you are either insatiable or ungrateful, or both. You have everything you need but you think you have nothing or unenough, because you want more of what you don’t need. That is why you are not thanking God for a smashing 2024.
As for my family, The BUSH Clan, and me, 2024 has been more than enough. 2024 has been too much. It gives me endless joy to discuss this at this opportune time when the celebration of Christ’s birth beckons. The joy is even more when I know that He was born for my sake and that I am living in and enjoying the dividends.
Praise the Lord, somebody! Thank You, Jesus, for 2024. What a year. It qualifies the most as the Michael BUSH year of ultimate clapbacks.
What and who they said I couldn’t or won’t be or have, I now am and do. Even impossibilities that I, myself, had tended to agree with haters vis-a-vis my circumstance or situation and future are now possibilities. All of them. Lines have fallen for me in pleasant places.
What a God we serve. What a year 2024 has been. Things that I thought had died in my hands suddenly sprang back to life. And, those hitherto dead things, now alive, have catapulted me to unimaginable heights and reach.
In 2024, God did me wonders. Fortunately or unfortunately, I am not able to offer you the roll call the way I want. Wisdom, the principal thing, is profitable to direct. And, in all my getting of wisdom in 2024, I have also got understanding.
Consequently, please forgive me, here is only a peep into the list of those God has used to bless me in 2024 so far. In no particular order, and I pray you can decode things enough to find your name, please step out and take a bow: GB, Dr AD; Dr (Mrs.) RD; Pastor USAE; Rt Hon. (Elder) ASA; Dr MA; TheBull; Engr KM; Arc. & Dr (Mrs.) AEN; Tsam; Comrade IE; Dr IFE; Hon. PU, Ph.D., Hon. UIA; Dr UU; Mr TA. Others are: Obong EE, his wife, Barr. EA; Mrs. CEE; Mrs. AEB, Miss DAB; Her Excellency, Mrs UA; His Excellency, Mr UGE; Dr GEE; Capt IE (retd); Group Captain (Elder) SE; Sen. AE, Ph.D.; Sen. ES; The Rt Hon. BU; Akparawa (Elder) NU; Akparawa JE; Hon. (Pastor) IU; Hon. CJ; Mr PJE and Wife, Mrs. UP; Pastor KJE; IJ (Director); Mr TE (ConsulTee), Pastor IO (our MD); Sir OO; Dr NLN; Dr OO (Honourable Commissioner). And, yet others: Mr OA; PCI; Mr JA (Accountant my friend); Pastor IGE (our PS); De Deep; Boyfriend; VINTAGE; Mr SG and everybody at T20QC; Mr IN and everybody at MBMA; Dr IE; Prof. PE; Prof. NI; Dr IN; Prof. AB; Prof. GO; Dr UAI.
… to be continued next Monday
Attention: Priests, doctor, pilots
Many thanks for your great jobs. However, please recalibrate your modus operandi. Be careful with your messaging.
The priest who is purportedly for God but who goes to and fro looking for whom to fish for God via preachments that invoke fear is gathering only fake believers. There is no doubt that false brethren don’t know God and in fact that God knows them not. Nobody should know or accept Christ because they are afraid or desperate.
Quit telling them that if they don’t follow Jesus, hell fire is all they shall get. Quit threatening them that if they don’t give to God, to hey won’t make heaven. Quit spreading “another gospel which is not another!”
You are next, dear medics, nurses and sundry healthcare workers. Beware how you frame your communication with your patient. Your words accelerate healing more than medicine would.
Never be harsh or pessimistic with the sick, especially those under your care. Always be gentle to them, even if they are poor or stubborn or undeserving. Everybody in the healthcare sector should be a lover; a giver, a helper: compassionate, humble, patient.
Finally, I turn my attention to a people I always wonder about. Pilots, how do you do it? Well, I love and extol your bravery, your help, and your selflessness.
My appeal though, is that after we have boarded and you have rolled the aircraft to just before take-off, never speak about how turbulence would happen here and there. It might seem funny but that is how high blood pressure began to deal with me. And, also, when we are in the sky, never keep quiet for too long; as if the plane or you are in trouble.
In rounding off this short take, I wish to take out time to thank all three of you for all the sacrifices and help you offer humanity. Apart from the teacher, who is number one in every ramification, you three have no good second when it comes to life roles. Many thanks for your fantastic work, dear priest, dear health worker, dear pilot et al.