Dear Editor,

It’s a very noble and wise counsel to teenagers to avoid sex if they can and to use contraceptives, but in all fairness to mankind there is an inevitable reality in all of this that has been gleefully missed: There is no pregnancy that is not of God. It is He alone who gives life and takes it away. We were not made unto ourselves, but unto God. The Psalmist exhorts us that, “Children are an heritage of the Lord and the fruit of the womb is His reward.”

The world we live in, if you take the time to examine it as Solomon the wisest man did, is a maverick, disorderly jungle with evil as its most predictable outcome. As a Christian and motivational speaker I was a firm exponent of the faith and positivity philosophy which I have come to realise is just an intellectual elixir to the inexperienced mind.

The God of the universe sets His plan and will for each man before the foundation of the Earth, and we have no choice but to walk in that path, whether it bears fruits or thorns. Job learnt this lesson the hard way. He declared that, “The thing I feared had come upon me,” when God dispossessed him of his 10 children, health and wealth, and reduced him to a mass of misery and despicable garbage abhorred by even his wife. He ended by leaving us the greatest truth ever, “A man that is born of a woman is of a few days and full of trouble.” He is staunchly supported by Solomon in his proverb which declares, “The goings of a man is of the Lord, How then can a man understand his own ways?” This earthly maxim is not to be undone without the cogent contribution of Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, who articulated “I know that the way of a man is not in himself. It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.”

Given then that we are all God’s, made in His image to bring glory to His name, whether through joy or pain, I recommend the following rules for life in this turbulent world that brings good and evil to all men at God’s command as declared by Isaiah: “I make the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things.”

* Learn to leave yourself in God’s mighty hand and accept His will for your life as Jesus did.

* As human beings sharing similar fate and experience, let us be our brother’s keeper, giving love and empathy to each other, sharing moments of joy as well as moments of sorrow.

* Migrate from the territory of judgement to the land of compassion, forgiveness, and unconditional love.

* Realise that God uses evil to produce good as an elusive divine principle, realising that He can use the worst experience to create our ultimate joy.

* Hold firmly unto the scripture which reminds us that, “All things work together for good to those who are called by God according to His purpose.”

Dr J D Wood

jdwood134@gmail.com