Ferrari In Traffic.

Last Sunday, a blind man preached to us in church. Reuben Kigame is a popular guy. From belting out popular gospel songs of various genres to being a media personality and even running for president in 2022. He in my view is a successful man both in public and private life. I even found out he is a grandfather. How cool is that? He’s maximising his gifts as he cements a rich legacy to his children and grandchildren.

On politics, he alludes that being visually impaired worked against him. Many perceived him as unable to run the country effectively because he couldn’t see. Reuben is a humorous guy. He made us erupt in laughter when he asked, “Now that you are being led by people with eyes, how’s that going?” He mentioned one advantage of being blind is that greed is tamed because you are unable to see all the things you’d be tempted to steal.

That was a long service but when I left I felt like I had much more idle capacity at my disposal. I’m like a Ferrari in traffic or like a tuk-tuk on a Formula One track. The world is moving fast and I’m at tortoise speed. Reuben also runs a Java-like restaurant in Eldoret city. Yaani this man is doing so much with his life bila eyesight yet I’m here with all my faculties and haven’t achieved as much as him. His vision seems much better than mine.

I agree that we all have our race to run and comparisons won’t help because it’s not a competition. I often encourage my baby sharks to compete against themselves. But I wonder how many of us complain yet we have so much untapped talent and opportunities. If you don’t use it you will lose it, one of my readers commented last week. And how true is that?

Many of us desire to maximise our gifts but we lack sufficient motivation. Until we are pushed to the corner and we realise we will lose a lot if we don’t act, that’s when we do something. Many of us do nothing because we are surviving on the little talent we have activated or we just simply prefer to complain. It’s easier after all and Kenyans have become pros at complaining. I’ve been on that bandwagon frequently and it does give a false sense of comfort when we blame our woes on others.

But there’s a group of folks busy in their toolkit of talents and abilities given by Sir God looking for how best to deal with the current situation in their lives and the country too. We all have what we need to not just survive but thrive in this life. Sir God is a genius. He gave us a skill and a way out of every situation. We just need to look keenly and apply ourselves and we won’t be as hopeless as we appear. Look at the many great things Reuben Kigame has achieved yet his eyesight was taken away at the age of 4. He sees much more through his inner eyes.

We have been to funerals of greatly gifted individuals. Sometimes I wonder whether my remorse is the fact that we have lost a good soul or that we will never see the greatness the person was destined for, especially if it was a death from a series of bad decisions. I’ve seen exceptionally talented golfers not amounting to much for lack of discipline and grit. They play to a national level and plateau there. Yet if they focused and pushed hard they would progress to much greater heights.

I had a chance to preach my learnings from Reuben’s message earlier this week. My baby shark was being recognized in her school at what they call achievement assembly. Mummy Shark and I couldn’t miss it. I had the brief not to shout otherwise I shouldn’t attend. Like for real, what happened to kids being proud of their parents’ loud support? Seems image is everything now so I had to restrain myself.

As is often the case I was at the back of the school hall enjoying our small people being recognized until the end when I heard the teacher running the program call my name. Baba Wambui (me) was just chilling then is called to the front to pray. I love Rusinga School for how they make a fuss about the Christian faith. But I do often feel picked on when I attend these school functions. I console myself that even my mum was quite involved in our school activities and maybe that helped us turn out as we did. So ni sawa tu. It’s the price of parenting and I don’t mind paying it.

As I walked to the front I thought it might be a good idea to inspire these small minds to start exploring what their gifts could be and how they can start working on them at this early stage of life. I had one small girl at the front read one of my favourite verses from the Good Book. It was Proverbs 18:16, “A man’s gift makes room for him and brings him before great men”

I tried to break down that verse in a way their young minds could understand. I encouraged the kids to harass their parents at home and teachers at school to help them identify their gifts and start developing them. In future, they will serve before kings and not obscure men (as another version says).  None of these kids was visually impaired like Reuben Kigame but I thought it would be good if we start encouraging them to open their inner eyes by growing their self-awareness while still young. That’s how you inspire a generation. I hope I did a tiny bit of that for the few minutes we interacted and prayed.

We could say I was finally not just a hearer of the word last Sunday but a doer of the word when I shared it with the young Kenyans at Rusinga school. I felt like I had built my legacy a few blocks up.