(1st Corinthians 13:11)
We all were once kids and we went through some experiences that shaped us into the adults we are today.
I remember 2 incidents regarding my parents that transformed my thinking…
When I was about 9-10 years old, my mother took me to the hospital (I can’t remember what for exactly- it’s almost 50 years ago now). As we walked back to the car after seeing the doctor, an ambulance drove into the Emergency Bay on top speed! As soon as the ambulance came to a halt, some nurses ran towards it with a bed with wheels as the back doors of the Ambulance flew open. An injured man was quickly lifted from the ambulance and wheeled into the hospital. There was blood everywhere- I had never seen so much blood in my life! As I stood there, taking it all in, I squeezed my mother’s hand and asked, “mummy, what happened to that man?”
It was an innocuous, innocent question from a boy, little did I know the answer would give me a serious Reality Check.
My mother replied, “I DON’T KNOW!”
Woah!!!
You DON’T know???
How can YOU not know???
How can you NOT know???
You are MUMMY, you know EVERYTHING!
I pressed further, my mother insisted she had no idea what happened to the man.
The drive back home was one of the longest in my short life. I just made a big discovery: MY MOTHER DIDN’T KNOW EVERYTHING!
Until that moment, I had always looked at my parents as the Encyclopedia of Knowledge: they ALWAYS had an answer to every question. It was a serious Reality Check for me: my mother was NOT as omniscient as I had imagined…
Well, maybe mummy dropped the ball- daddy probably knows more than mummy, my young mind concluded…
A few days later, I went out with my father. As we drove along the road, he saw a car ahead of him and said, “Ah! That is Kay!” Now, my father had a friend we called Uncle Kayode. Naturally, I assumed “Kay” was Uncle Kayode. My father stepped on the gas, flashing his lights at the vehicle. The driver noticed us and parked. My father levelled up with the vehicle and looked inside: it was NOT Uncle Kayode! My father said, “Sorry, I thought it was someone else: I have a friend who drives a similar vehicle, same model, same color…” the other man asked, “Same number plate too?” Both men laughed and my dad said the words that broke my heart: “Sorry, I WAS WRONG”!!!
We drove off, but my innocent world crashed that day.
So, daddy could be WRONG!!! Daddy and mummy are NOT Encyclopedia of Knowledge!!!
There are things they don’t KNOW! They could be WRONG!!! I don’t know which one hurt deeper- mummy not knowing what happened to the man from the ambulance or daddy admitting he was wrong.
But it didn’t matter: I learned 2 hard lessons a few days apart.
And those events birthed something in me: the quest for KNOWLEDGE. Realizing my Fountain of Knowledge (my parents) had limitations, I decided to start finding things out myself.
“…What I don’t know, I searched out” -Job 29:16
“I applied my heart to know, to search and seek out wisdom and the reason of things…” – Ecclesiastes 7:25
The following year, my mother traveled to the UK for a 6-month course. She bought a set of Encyclopedia Britannica (about 20 volumes) and a set of Medical Encyclopedia (4 volumes) and arranged them on the bookshelf in the living room.
I read (probably crammed) everything!
My parents would come home from work to see me reading Encyclopedias and wonder why: they had no idea it was their fault. They had no idea that disappointing me provoked me to seek knowledge myself.
This was in 1980, thereabouts.
Now, my elder brother got married in 1993 in Sokoto and his wife delivered a baby boy in January, 1996. They came home on vacation later that year- their son was about 6 months old by then. I happened to be home too.
One evening, the toddler swallowed something that got stuck in his windpipe and he started choking: he couldn’t breathe! His parents panicked, my parents panicked. I picked up the boy, placed him face-down between my laps with his arms stretched out to the left and to the right, spread his legs by my sides to the left and to the right. I hit him hard between the shoulder blades and out popped a peanut from his mouth!
Everybody was stunned!
The boy screamed and started crying. The sound of his tears was MUSIC to our ears- he was ALIVE!
My mother asked, “Harry, where did you learn THAT from?”
I walked to the bookshelf, picked one volume of the Medical Encyclopedia and opened to where the maneuver I just executed was graphically described.
I felt VINDICATED!
My quest for KNOWLEDGE just came out in the open- in the presence of those who provoked me to look for the knowledge in the first place (my parents)!
Paul wrote, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” – 1st Corinthians 13:11
When I was a child, I thought my parents knew everything: they could NEVER be wrong in my eyes! Just like for some believers today, their Pastors, Teachers, Prophets, Bishops, Apostles etc. can NEVER be wrong in their eyes.
As you grow in Christ (or rather IF you grow in Christ), you will find out (just as I did with my parents) that ANYBODY can be wrong: NOBODY IS INFALLIBLE!
And at the end of the day, you will discover that what YOU learn YOURSELF may make the difference between LIFE and DEATH.
Shalom,
Haruna Daniels