UNDERSTANDING LIFE

UNDERSTANDING LIFE

Life we need to understand is not the mate of any created being. All created beings are brought or ushered into life (an existing life for that matter) and only granted the permission and authority to enjoy this God-given life or live this life as it pleases one.

Every created being id given the opportunity to live this life on earth for a period of time; and when this time expires, the spirit and the soul are withdrawn, and the body become a carcass, returning to the earth as dust. This is what is called death or end-of-life.

In reality however, this is not the end of life; for life is for eternity. At the expiry of the time of the individual beings on earth, the individual is withdrawn or translated to the world beyond to continue living same life.At the time of resurrection, every created being shall be restored to the same life that had been in existencebefore being created.

At the time of judgements, every created being is made to live his or her God-given life in;

a.     Kingdom of God.

b.     Perdition.

Life therefore is beyond us and not our property; we therefore cannot change life nor alter it. We can only change life pattern or style and the way live life.

If it were possible for us to change life, many people would have escaped with their wickedness and prayers of God’s visitation on enemies of our God-given life with fire as a punishment will have been thwarted.

Amos chapter 1 and 2, the Bible enjoins us to bless our enemies to enable us heap coal of fire on them. This is because God knows the life granted the enemy is intact and unchangeable. The law of Karma would have been of no effect had it been it were possible to change life.

Any attempt by anyone to want to change life like chameleon is in futility. Any expectation to be endowed with another life after you have foolishly and mercilessly ruined your God-given life also amounts to futile expectations.

NB: Life is beyond us and not our mate or subordinate to toil with. The question, where will you spend eternity only becomes relevant when there is an understanding that life is an eternal gift of God that can be spent either in God’s Kingdom or in Perdition.What is changeable about life are only;

a.     The style.

b.     The pattern.

c.      The way you live God’s given life.

Why will you not concentrate your efforts on changing your life style, pattern and way of living instead of praying to change what remaineth unchangeable?

All those who have in one way or the other afflicted you with pains and torment cannot escape from the judgement and punishment of God whether dead or living as God will visit them with His wrath. God’s visitation may be now or later; but for sure there is no escape.

Enjoy your God-given life without subjecting others to pain thinking you have escape. Stop your attempt to control life or rule life – enjoy it as you find it.

Chaplain Prof. Mike David JP, AP, CPC.

Chief Consultant Chaplain

ADVERSITY CALLS FOR ADVOCACY AS WELL AS EMPATHY

ADVERSITY CALLS FOR ADVOCACY AS WELL AS EMPATHY

Definition of Terms:

1.     Adversity – A state, conditions or instance of intense difficulties, fortune or misfortune.

2.     Calls for – Warrants, given an invitation to beckon to or make something necessary.

3.     Advocacy – The act or process of advocacy for supporting a cause or proposal.

4.     Empathy –The imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object. The action of undertaking. Being sensitive to and being aware of.  Experiencing the feelings, thoughts and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts and experience communicated.

Hurting:

1.     Increasing physical pains or wounds.

2.     To do substantial damage or injury or material harm.

3.     To cause emotional pains or anguish.

4.     To be detrimental to or hamper.

Problems of humanity have become so advanced and complicated with some of them attaining the sophistication that require tactical, compassionate handling and touch of professional experts, who have the needed expertise and experience .

Some of these problems have assumed a continuous nature that makes them seem to have no end or solution. From all indication and the definition of terms, adversity is said to be intense fortune or adverse fortune.

Adverse fortune or misfortune inflicts agonies and sufferings upon the people. Such adverse fortune or misfortune in the midst of plenty as provided for people by the Almighty God brings hurting unto the people of our world. Some of such adversities plaguing our world and generation could be as listed below:

1.     Injustices of the highest order.

2.     Marginalization by the powers that be.

3.     Denials of equal opportunities.

4.     Inability on the part of the government to provide people with needed social amenities.

5.     Neglect of the poor and down trodden by national governments.

6.     Insensitivity of governments to the yearnings of the people.

7.     The looting of government treasury by government officials.

8.     Governments embarking on white elephant projects instead of caring to benefit the people.

9.     Failure on the part of national government for providing youths with empowerments.

10.                        Neglect of the senior citizens by national government.

All these points enumerated above can be classified as adversities as they increase the hurting and pains inflicted upon the innocent citizens. Because of the adversities, advocacy becomes important and necessary.

Adversity for sure sends signals to the people concerned to mount the needed advocacy for the hurting, and a clarion call on the government to see to the needs of the general public. Adversities warrant the mounting of advocacy. Just as adversities calls for advocacy, it also calls for empathy for the hurting and neglected public.

It is our duty and responsibility as professional Chaplains and pastoral care-givers and providers to:

1.     Identify with the hurting community in their situations.

2.     Helping to find the needed solutions to their problems.

3.     Endeavouring to help reduce the suffering of those hurting to the barest minimum.

4.     Standing by the hurting communities in their developments.

5.     Helping to point out to governments the root causes of the people’s problems and reminding the government to take responsibility for the social welfare of the entire citizenry of their nations.

In conclusion therefore, chaplaincy profession and practicing professionals (professional chaplains) must go a step further than providing the needed care for the hurting; they must also stand against the vices in the society and ask governments for a change of behavior and attitudes.

Chaplain Prof. Mike David JP, AP, CPC.

Chief Consultant Chaplain

ADVERSITY CALLS FOR ADVOCACY AS WELL AS EMPATHY

ADVERSITY CALLS FOR ADVOCACY AS WELL AS EMPATHY

Definition of Terms:

1.     Adversity – A state, conditions or instance of intense difficulties, fortune or misfortune.

2.     Calls for – Warrants, given an invitation to beckon to or make something necessary.

3.     Advocacy – The act or process of advocacy for supporting a cause or proposal.

4.     Empathy –The imaginative projection of a subjective state into an object. The action of undertaking. Being sensitive to and being aware of.  Experiencing the feelings, thoughts and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts and experience communicated.

Hurting:

1.     Increasing physical pains or wounds.

2.     To do substantial damage or injury or material harm.

3.     To cause emotional pains or anguish.

4.     To be detrimental to or hamper.

Problems of humanity have become so advanced and complicated with some of them attaining the sophistication that require tactical, compassionate handling and touch of professional experts, who have the needed expertise and experience .

Some of these problems have assumed a continuous nature that makes them seem to have no end or solution. From all indication and the definition of terms, adversity is said to be intense fortune or adverse fortune.

Adverse fortune or misfortune inflicts agonies and sufferings upon the people. Such adverse fortune or misfortune in the midst of plenty as provided for people by the Almighty God brings hurting unto the people of our world. Some of such adversities plaguing our world and generation could be as listed below:

1.     Injustices of the highest order.

2.     Marginalization by the powers that be.

3.     Denials of equal opportunities.

4.     Inability on the part of the government to provide people with needed social amenities.

5.     Neglect of the poor and down trodden by national governments.

6.     Insensitivity of governments to the yearnings of the people.

7.     The looting of government treasury by government officials.

8.     Governments embarking on white elephant projects instead of caring to benefit the people.

9.     Failure on the part of national government for providing youths with empowerments.

10.                        Neglect of the senior citizens by national government.

All these points enumerated above can be classified as adversities as they increase the hurting and pains inflicted upon the innocent citizens. Because of the adversities, advocacy becomes important and necessary.

Adversity for sure sends signals to the people concerned to mount the needed advocacy for the hurting, and a clarion call on the government to see to the needs of the general public. Adversities warrant the mounting of advocacy. Just as adversities calls for advocacy, it also calls for empathy for the hurting and neglected public.

It is our duty and responsibility as professional Chaplains and pastoral care-givers and providers to:

1.     Identify with the hurting community in their situations.

2.     Helping to find the needed solutions to their problems.

3.     Endeavouring to help reduce the suffering of those hurting to the barest minimum.

4.     Standing by the hurting communities in their developments.

5.     Helping to point out to governments the root causes of the people’s problems and reminding the government to take responsibility for the social welfare of the entire citizenry of their nations.

In conclusion therefore, chaplaincy profession and practicing professionals (professional chaplains) must go a step further than providing the needed care for the hurting; they must also stand against the vices in the society and ask governments for a change of behavior and attitudes.

Chaplain Prof. Mike David JP, AP, CPC.

Chief Consultant Chaplain

Pastoral Care and Chaplaincy Week 2016AD

SPIRITUAL RESILIENCE

In marking this year’s Pastoral Care and Chaplaincy Week, 2016AD, the international body has given us this topic to consider in all activities we put forward to mark this year’s pastoral care and chaplaincy week globally “Spiritual Resilience.”

Before attempting to do justice to this topic, we must seek to understand the key words in the phrase:

1.     Spiritual:

This can be defined as the spiritual aspect of a living being, especially a human being. It can also rightly be said to be the part of the human being that is the spirit. It can be unambiguously be defined as anything that pertains to the soul and spirit.

2.     Resilience:

This can be defined as the action or attempt to restore or return to normalcy people after traumatic and harrowing experiences in life. It can also be said to be the efforts, action and attempt on the part of a professional such as care-givers and Chaplains in restoring normalcy to people who have been subjected to traumatic events or experiences in the recent past or to help professionally ensure that people are able to return to the normal lives they had lived before the ugly incidences that made them experience trauma and unpleasant pains beyond their expectations in life.

NB: As we desire in pastoral care and chaplaincy profession globally to give the people of our contemporary world, wholistic care and therapeutic treatment as professionals, the topic for this year’s pastoral care and chaplaincy week is a welcome development.

We understand that man is a tripatized being consisting of;

a.     Soul.

b.     Spirit.

c.      Body.

The provision of wholistic care for mankind thus entails caring for the spiritual aspect of man, caring for the soulist aspect of man and caring for the physical body of man.

The happenings in our contemporary world, which is full of violence of all kinds, terror unleashed unto many innocent people and incessant rapes especially of the minors with impunity has in no small way expose people unto traumas, pains, agonies and suffering that has in no small measure assisted in eroding the spiritual stability, the emotional stability and psychological stability of many.

The erosion of spiritual stability in people is our concern in this discourse and the professional mandate given to pastoral care-givers and professional Chaplains in bringing such people out of the woods, presenting them with enabling environment which will make live again as if they had not being traumatized, violated or stigmatized in life.

Resilience provides for them ability to live beyond their situations, living as if nothing disastrous and injurious has never happened to them before.

There so many happenings and occurrences in our world today that affects the spiritual equilibrium of people and destabilizes them.

When the spiritual equilibrium of individual becomes eroded, the stability is affected and the resultant effect is confusion and negative thoughts and as soon as this occurs, the person begins to loose trust and confidence in the Ultimate God, begins to ask many questions such as:

a.     Why has God allowed this?

b.     Why I of all people?

c.      Where is God when they took me hostage and violated my rights, subjecting me to torture?

d.     Where is God when it hurts?

e.     When will my avenger come?

What we are now looking for are:

a.     Pastoral Counselors.

b.     Pastoral Care-givers.

c.      Professional Chaplains.

Who are professionally trained, nurtured and equipped to answer the questions posed at us by the traumatized and victimized people, without allowing their trust and confidence stray away from the Almighty God who remaineth the Ultimate for eternity.

 We are in search of professionals who understand that:

a.     God of the mountains is the same God of the valleys.

b.     God of the noon time is the same God of the even tides.

c.      God of the day is the same God of the night.

We are seeking professionals who have the ability, capacity and capability to make people keep God in focus as the Ultimate, without loosing their trusts and confidence in Him no matter what happens.

We are looking for professional Chaplains, pastoral care-givers and counselors who are highly intelligent, professionally skilled and competent to return people who have undergone harrowing and traumatic experiences to normalcy by providing the needed resilience especially spiritual resilience.

We are seeking for professional Chaplains, pastoral care-givers and counselors who worth their onions and can minister to the people of our world who have experienced some forms of trauma and have been destabilized spiritually, restoring them to normalcy.

We are seeking for professionals who can help rekindle the spirituality in those whose spirituality has dwindled and are in doubts because of what they have been subjected to in life by circumstances which are not pleasant.

We are seeking for professionals who themselves enjoy spiritual stability and equilibrium, and are able to bring around those whose stabilities have been eroded to the point of stability one more time.

We are seeking professional Chaplains, pastoral care-givers and counselors who will give the needed attention and concern for the spiritual care and need of the traumatized, helping to provide the needed resilience for such people in life.

Chaplain Prof. Mike-David