STILL STANDING

Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000105 EndHTML:0000008833 StartFragment:0000002539 EndFragment:0000008797

A time comes in life when we are faced and challenged by life’s issues. It is a time when each one of us faces a reckoning moment. This is what I would call a decisive moment of one’s walk of faith or belief.  

Jonnie grew up in a small peasant family that depended on their little farm for their daily bread. It is the eggs, cabbage, and tomatoes that were grown here that were later sold to pay for Jonnie’s fees. Every holiday, he spent his time on the farm helping his father. “The air here is fresh, I just love being in the countryside.” Jonnie would remark. Towards the end of his graduation in medicine, he was introduced to a visiting professor who promised to help him get a job in the city. On the other hand, he had struck a great friendship with the local people of his town, giving them the hope of becoming the General Practitioner for the town. They were looking forward for the day Jonnie would take over the local clinic in the rural town where they stayed with the father. In fact, his uncle who was the local doctor was now old and needed to retire. To him, being a General Practitioner for the village would be a great blessing since it would make it easier for him to care for the farm. But, as he would come to find out, you cannot have hot tea and a cold soda in the same glass.

When he reported home after the graduation, Jonnie was shocked to find that all his neighbours had entered into a contract of selling their land to a private developer who wanted to get quarry dust from it. The condition was that the land would have to be sold as a whole or none at all for the developer to purchase it. Jonnie’s father who loved farming and wanted to keep the biodiversity of the area had refused to sell his portion of the land. As a result, the town people had taken him to court for denying them an opportunity for a better life. As if being heckled and jeered by the town people was not enough, an arsonist came at night and burnt down the storehouse where he had kept his grain. Jonnie could not take it any more. He tried to persuade his dad to sell the land so they could move to the city where they could start a new life but he was adamant on staying there.

To Jonnie’s father, it was more than toiling to make a living from this backward place that did not even have electricity. It was about the saving of the future generations from the exploitation of the ‘get rich quick’ kind of people.

One night as the father lay in bed exhausted from the day’s work, the neighbours’ insults and complaints, he looked at the son in the face and said; “Son, I know you do not agree with me in this action, but, remember, even if I were to be left the only man standing or made to lose my life, I will not give up for what I feel deeply is the right thing to do. One day you will understand.”  With those words, he put the title deed of the land in the son’s hand and added, “I have done what I knew to have been right, now it is your turn.” That evening, he breathed his last and died leaving behind a son confronted by the tough choice of keeping the faith of his father burning or going for the brief joys of the city life.

Today’s life has its challenges and seductions. Daily, we are tossed from left to right by the canning craftiness of men, every wind of doctrine and promises of opportunities that would call us to compromise even our faith. The Scripture says that God is searching the earth for a man to stand in the gap. Elsewhere we read of Esau who for a bowl of soup sold his birthright. As much as his immediate hunger was quenched, he lost the only thing that cost him his inheritance.

Remember the old hymn; “Stand up, stand up for Jesus; ye soldiers of the cross.” some today are no different. No wonder the Bible says, “When the Son of Man returns, shall he find faith on the earth?” Who will be found still standing, confessing, and willing to sacrifice even his own life for the faith?

This month we will look at the series “STILL STANDING!”

Philip and Dinah Kitoto, ICC Senior Pastors