As the ‘finish line’ (graduation) appears within my proximity, like Paul, I seem to have laid down all the impediments that would have deterred me from running. And as I look back at my journey at African Christian College, not with regret but with utmost acceptance of the ‘sweat’, the tears and joyful moments of my experience, for these were means to a greater purpose. At this juncture, I look forward, not with fear, but with confidence, as Paul says to the Philippians (2:13) that “…it is God who works in you (and me) to will and to act according to his good purpose.”
My conviction is that I was called by God, and not by any human being, not because of who I was, but because of who I could become. I ask myself, who am I now? I have passed through great purification, having been mentored by great men and women of God; the lecturers and every member of the ACC community who taught me in and out of class. Consequently, the nearest answer I give myself is that “I have not arrived yet” but I am a still work-in-progress, yet I am also a ready worker in the vineyard of the Lord.
I owe my success not to my own ‘intelligence’ or that of my teachers, but to the wisdom of God, who is all-knowing and transcendent. Again, I owe my success to the long list of friends I have made along the way, my family, my local and home congregations and last but not least, our esteemed donors who greatly reduced the financial load I was supposed to carry. I am now empowered, and it is my time to take up the torch and empower others.
The decisive moment has come now, and in the words of Martin Luther King Jnr “Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve, you don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb to agree for you to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”