Strength of Living

Avwoghoke Okoro

Description

Strength of Living centres on Robert and his wife Agnes who are devoted Christians. They also inculcate the Christian values in their children. Robert worked with a foreign and expatriate-dominated construction company as a site engineer, and was well known for his discipline and diligence which earned him the highest award in the company. In his church, Robert is the head of Hospital and Prison Ministry and his ministry had been making great impact in these two areas. Against run of the mill, he loses his job due to some racial intrigues at the management level. This brings untold hardship to the family. Agnes tries to sustain the family. When Robert sees that he is unable to play his traditional role of the breadwinner of his family, he becomes withdrawn, depressed and frustrated. His church too does not help matters much as church members and its management seem to have abandoned him. His reactions have grave consequences for his family and community relations.

Sujets

• Sagas
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Malthouse Press
• Date de parution: 27 décembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789785916539
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

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  By Bright Avwoghoke Okoro

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Published and manufactured in Nigeria by

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All glory comes from daring to begin. - Eugene F. Ware

CHAPTER ONE Robert was awaiting daybreak in his living room, while reflecting on a sermon for his family’s morning devotion to God. It was customary for him to wake up to study and reflect deeply on the morning devotion and patterned it clearly in his mind before beginning the morning worship with his family every morning. Left with him, he would prefer the devotion much earlier as he liked the period for praise-worship to be longer. But he appreciated the fact that not everybody in the family would like it, especially his children who were hurried into the devotion and followed it willy nilly, as they struggled to keep awake during the session. Robert knew that his children had not been able to appreciate the morning devotion, the way it should be. But he thought the children must of necessity be made to imbibe Christian values as early as possible and get used to its lifestyle and had their lives patterned after it. He had always had his mind fixed on the biblical saying.Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it (Proverb 22:6).Be that as it may, he would not want to disturb them too earlier in the morning, so that they would not see the early morning worship as a burden and develop wrong attitude towards it. At 5.20 am, the devotion began. Oro, his first child who was in her final class in primary school led the praise worship. Most cases she led the praise-worship session, and always did so in the same order by regularly repeating the same songs successively each day and they all had become so used to it that each of them could easily predict the song that would follow every song in the praise-worship. In this way, the whole praise-singing had become so mechanical that, apart from Robert, no other person among them was meditating upon the wordings of each rhythm, in appreciation of God’s benevolence towards mankind, especially the faithful. But that was not to bother the head of the family who was a devout Christian. Ensuring that his children embraced Christian life as early as possible was all that mattered to him.

2

B. A. Okoro

Agnes, Robert’s wife, appreciated her husband’s devotion to the faith. As a daughter of a Reverend, she had gone through the same regimented Christian upbringing as a child and was used to her husband’s insistence on strict observance of biblical principles in the family, which sometimes reminded her of her own father. At times she saw her husband exactly in the mould of her father. But with the hindsight of a pastor’s daughter, she knew that the casting of children into the Christian mould regimentally might not always lead to true Christian life in adulthood. In some cases, it might be counter- productive. But as a wife in the Christian faith, she knew her place in the family. She was only an adviser, who must not push her ideas too strongly lest she would be reminded of Ephesians 5:22 in the scripture: Wives submit yourselves unto your own husband, as unto the Lord.But from time to time, she had told her husband that, all that the children needed was a guide and a close monitoring while allowing them to express their natural tendencies where there would be opportunities for corrections. Robert was often reluctant to make his feeling known to his wife whenever this issue of how to raise their children came up. He believed very strongly that children should be properly brought up in the fear of the Lord and the only way to do that was to make them see life and everything from the prism of the Bible. He saw the Bible as all- encompassing, touching every aspect of life. And to make the children thorough Christians they had to study the Bible thoroughly and commit every word in it to their hearts, so that, every of their actions and conduct was regulated by the word of God. In this way, they would be in good standing with the Lord. Robert placed great emphasis on Bible- reading in the family, as he always ensured that his children read the Bible in their spare time, and he had been getting encouragement from the children, Ovo, his son, had won the Bible quiz, twice in the church. Oro had also made him proud when she came out first in memory verse recitation last year. These occasions were his proudest moments in the church. As usual, the praise–singing that morning was followed by Bible study. That week Robert had scheduled the ‘Ten Commandments’ for

Strength of Living

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the family study which he believed was the foundation of children’s moral upbringing. Oro read the ‘Ten Commandments’ in Exodus Chapter 20, to the hearing of everyone in the house. But as usual with Robert, he considered the first reading as preparing the ground for a thorough study. Robert always considered it his duty to re-read the Bible passage of every morning ‘devotion’ slowly and resonantly to bring out the spiritual meaning of the word. As he was doing so, he expected each of his children to pay absolute attention with all his mind and soul to what he was saying. It would be most unfortunate for any of the children to be seen dozing or not paying absolute attention during the period. The children knew their father’s attitude towards the devotion so they always tried to maintain absolute quiet and undivided visible attention as expected.  After Robert had re-read the Scripture passage and had done all the pontifications, bringing out all the moral implications in his thorough and exhaustive analysis, they would prayer. Most times, the prayer session could be so long and boring that after sometime, the children would only be waiting for their father’s final word to say their Amen, without really listening. In this way, nevertheless, Robert was able to carry his family through the morning devotion successfully always. Once the devotion was over, Agnes, his wife, with the children would go about the domestic chores like bees, knowing that the devotion had taken much of the time, in order for the children to be in school on time. On several occasions, she had appealed to her husband to be time conscious, during the morning devotion. But she always heard the rebuffing refrain, ‘Allow the Holy Spirit to lead.’ And after sometime, she stopped complaining.  Robert was a disciplinarian and strict adherent to work ethics. He was the Site Engineer of Ansco Construction Company Limited. He coordinated and supervised the company’s construction projects. At work, Robert did not only emphasize strong work ethics among the workers under him, he also ensured that project works were carried out strictly to specifications, in compliance with their engineering designs