Finding Faith

Ancient Israel had a feast called the Feast of Booths. It was also called the Feast of Tabernacles. This feast marked their exodus from Egypt to Canaan. God ordered that they make tents and live in them for a whole week. It was supposed to serve as a reminder of what He did for them during their forty-year wilderness journey.
The feast of Tabernacles was instituted to keep the nation thankful by keeping their memory alive. The feast was purely a celebration of what God did for them. They kept the miracles in mind and gave offerings of thanksgiving. They had other feasts as well. All of them were celebrations of different things God did for them at different stages in their nationhood.
Stock-taking is a sure path to faith. Every good business owner knows the necessity of taking stock. It’s your way of knowing what you have and the state of your goods. It tells you how much goods have been sold, how many are left, how many are spoilt etc.
Before you whimper and whine again, take out time to take stock of what you have. It will put things in perspective. Remember prisons are only mind games. Take out time right now to take stock. What do you have? How many wildernesses have you passed? What good things do you have? Can you read this? You have reason to celebrate. Can you hear someone read it to you? That is more reason to celebrate! Do you understand what you read? You are the most blessed human on earth. We pay attention to vanities and thus forsake the mercies we have received.
Are you short on faith? Celebrate the victories you’ve gotten. They are proof you’ll keep succeeding. And are you sick and tired of some whatsoever? Doctor says to take pills of thanksgiving. Take it in large quantities. There is no overdose. The more the better!
Listen, climb a good tree after reading this. Get to the very top. Then let out a loud shout. Doctor says so too. It’s called a victory shout and is guaranteed to destabilize heart attack. Then spend the rest of today smiling at yourself. If you don’t have a glass of wine for a toast then you can jolly well make do with water! Congratulate yourself. Get yourself a gold medal that would make Usain Bolt jealous. Remind yourself of the tough times you’ve been through. Give thanks for the hurdles you’ve scaled. There is no medal as beautiful, no drug as powerful, no therapy as cleansing as the attitude of thanksgiving to God. Get it today. It gives the past a definition, the present a meaning and supplies hope to the future.
I end this exercise and find out I didn’t find faith. Faith was never lost. She has always been closer than my worries let me see. And she has been tapping me on the shoulders every now and then. The little rays of rainbow sun I see every morning, the whispers of the wind behind my ears, the sweet smell of new rain on the sun baked earth, the taste of this African dawn- crying cockerels, cold warmth, snoring song birds- it was all faith’s song to me. It was faith nudging me to spend one more minute admiring the new shoot on the tree stump by the road. It was faith that suggested to me that even cut tree grow up. It was faith that told me rain is the promise that the harvest will not waste, that the future is a blessed reality. Faith sang to me yesterday the songs of freedom.
Faith found me, when I took stock.