Change Not, Live Not

“Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

The year I studied Macbeth was a year before I sat for my School Certificate exams at the C.M.S. (Church Missionary Society) Grammar School in Lagos. These were days when schools were still schools in Nigeria. Standards were still high, comparable with any in the universe. Days when you were sure of getting a sound education up to tertiary level. I fell in love with Macbeth. However, the next year, my final o'level year, found me studying Twelfth Night. My disposition certainly was not compatible with Twelfth Night. Macbeth was filled with intrigues and sinister plots. It had this michaevillian dimension to it, which described life as it is really lived by her denizens.

Unlike Macbeth, Twelfth Night depicted the lighter side of life and had a humourous note to it. It was like an anti-climax to Macbeth. I felt I should have studied Twelfth Night before Macbeth. I would certainly have done better with my final score if it had been so. Macbeth stuck in my memory like a leach. It portrayed the vagaries and vicissitudes of life. It was filled with passion and obsession. It fitted the human nature like a glove.

The quote above depicts the uncertainty of life and its transitory nature. With this perfect understanding, I ask myself the question, why the running around from pillar to post in the quest for food to power. If you look at life from a fatalistic view, you'll probably acquiesce to that which life brings and accept the negative as yours. On the other side, if you seek to seize the forces of life and channel them to negotiate a pathway that seems promising and positive then you'll probably run from the reality of the downward sides of life. Which ever way you look at it, Macbeth's quote above clearly defines the nature of life.

For us here in this part of the world - sub-saharan Africa - where life can be short and brutish, we have come to learn that there are no negatives. The Spirit of the Creator does not do wrong. Evil in itself has a purpose. There's nothing which exists that exists in nothingness, without purpose. One must not be distracted by it, since it abounds around us and seeks to always reach out its ugly hands making a grasp for us. Goodness must cut her way through it, like a hot knife through butter to reach that light which is unquenchable and unapproachable by nature as this light is designed to overshadow the whole earth.

We will not say again like everyone else "with the resources abounding in Africa, the African should not know poverty, howbeit abject". We will say, that which we stand for, and possibly die for, is to see providence permeate the earth and totally obliterate evil whether in Africa or elsewhere.

By Wisdom the Lord founded the earth....by knowledge He established it....by understanding He filled it with riches......this is our lot....Shalom!