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“Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain.” ~ Exodus 20:7 Remember how, in children’s session growing up, this was one of the verses they used to instill the fear of God in us? It was one of the scariest Bible verses, and at the time, it was interpreted to us as, “Saying God’s name anyhow is a sin,” one that God takes very seriously. It wasn’t until recently when I watched this YouTube that I began to understand the verse differently. Not that saying God’s name carelessly is completely unrelated to the commandment, but that the commandment goes deeper than simply saying “God” or “Jesus” in the wrong context. The Hebrew word translated as “take” is nasa, which carries the idea of lifting, carrying, bearing, or taking up. So there is something about carrying the name of God that this commandment addresses. And that got me thinking. By calling ourselves Christians, we take on an identity, we identify with Christ, we carry His name. Which means that perhaps taking His name ...
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When the people we love are in pain, we often feel like there is something we have to do. Save them. Help them. Find a solution. Say the right thing that will make everything feel better. But more often than not, the greatest act of care we can offer is simply being there. Sit with them through the discomfort. Hold them when they cry, listen when they need to talk. And sometimes, just shut up and allow them to exist the best way they know how at that point in time. Not every pain needs a solution from us. Sometimes, people just need the comfort of knowing that they do not have to carry it alone. Like I would often say, letting people be is such a love language. There is something beautiful about loving people without constantly trying to fix them. About giving them room to feel, to process, to be quiet, to fall apart, and eventually find their way back to themselves. Sometimes, love is not pulling someone out of the dark, sometimes, it is simply sitting beside them until their eyes adj...
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Can we be cool even when we don’t see eye to eye on a matter?

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When I say Cristina Yang is my favourite character from Grey’s Anatomy and Derek and Meredith are my favourite couple from the show, I’m serious. Let’s talk about Derek and Meredith. They don’t have a perfect relationship, but there’s just this ease with them that I love. Take, for instance, the patient they once worked on together, a man who had killed five women and was on death row. The case was a lot for both of them. Derek’s dad had been killed by someone like him, so Derek wanted the man to live long enough to face his death sentence. Meredith, on the other hand, felt compassion for the man despite his crimes. She would rather he died in the hospital, as he wished. So yeah, on this particular case, they were completely at odds. But guess what? They were not unkind to each other. Meredith literally attended the man’s execution, she’s sentimental like that, and when she came out of the execution room, Derek was outside waiting for her in his car. Seeing that made me want to scream!...
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Merry Independence Day 🇳🇬

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I don't have any inspirational yada for you, nah. Just something that happened today in a group chat I'm part of. Well, today being Independence Day, there were wishes in the group, and then someone replied with, “What's really happy about this independence? I bet you're looking for network or light at your location, hence there's nothing to celebrate about the country.” But the person at the other end, who had made the wish in the group chat, replied with something that struck me. He said, “Not me, I have light and I have network.” So apparently, the fact that he's doing just fine somehow means all is well with the world. And maybe it wasn't even what he said, but the way he said it. There was this strange, almost off putting arrogance to it, like it doesn't really matter what everyone else is experiencing as long as it isn't his experience. Dearest reader, it got me thinking about how many of us are like this. As long as the system works for us, th...
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How do you live with yourself? On today’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy, my guy killed a woman. Okay, maybe “killed” sounds a little harsh, but that’s exactly how Derek Shepherd saw it. Of all the surgeons in the series, Derek is the attending I absolutely love. Yes, he has a fine face and good hair, but aside from that, he is a badass surgeon. Literally a mini god in the OR, a world class neurosurgeon who seems to know exactly what he’s doing every single time. So there was this particular surgery. It wasn’t some impossible, never-before-seen procedure, it was a simple surgery, one of those procedures they do so often that, at some point, you probably could do it with your eyes closed. Derek was confident she would live, but surgery is surgery. Things can go wrong, even when you have done everything right, she developed complications and eventually died. And that broke him. It was painful and personal, and somehow Derek couldn’t separate the fact that she died from the feeling that he had...
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“There’s a hole the size of God inside your heart, and if He doesn’t fill it, something else will instead.” ~ X I came across this quote recently, and it got me thinking about something rather fascinating about human beings. Long before the world became as connected as it is today, before people from completely different parts of the earth could communicate with one another, human beings were already trying to answer some of the biggest questions imaginable. Where did we come from? How did the world begin? Why are we here? Different cultures developed different explanations, they had their own creation stories, gods and beliefs about how the world came to be. Their answers were different, but the search was remarkably similar: there was a desire to understand where everything came from. And I think that says something about us. There has always been something in humanity that reaches beyond itself, a longing to know our Creator, to understand our existence, and to find meaning in the f...
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WHAT IS GOOD?

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You're more likely to answer that a good person is someone who does good. But have you ever considered that even bad people are capable of doing good? The most horrible of persons can still exhibit kindness, generosity and consideration every now and then. If that's the case, then what exactly makes a person good? What exactly makes something good? What exactly is good? If anybody can do good, and anything can appear to be good, then what defines good? What makes good, truly good? We all know the statement, "God is good." Which means that if God is the standard of good, then to understand what is good, we have to understand the will of God. Not performative good. Not pseudo good, not simply what looks good to us, but good as defined by the One who is good. Therefore, what is in God's will is good, and perhaps that's the distinction we've been missing. An action doesn't become good simply because it produces a good-looking result, neither do...
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HOW FAR IS TOO FAR?

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How far is too far? Where do we draw the line? On today’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy, there was an interesting twist, one that had me wondering just how serious the oath to “do no harm” is when it comes to saving a little boy’s life. So, here’s the full gist. There’s a psychopathic serial killer who murdered five women and was completely unapologetic about it. He’s also on death row and scheduled to die in the next five days. On top of all that, he has a serious surgical injury to his spine. Now, there’s also a little boy, around four years old, who needs an organ transplant. He’ll die within hours if the transplant isn’t done. Although he’s at the top of the transplant list, there’s no matching donor. And guess who is a match? The death row serial killer who murdered five women. Interestingly, the man is ready to die. He doesn’t want the surgery to fix his spine or the injury to his head. He wants to donate his organ to the little boy because, after all, he’s going to die in a few days...
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We are so focused on what we want that we miss what's in front of us. Recently, I experienced a level of favour I didn't expect or deserve. I was so happy because it covered for something that had been troubling my mind for a while, but do you know the moment that was sorted, I didn't even take a break to appreciate it. I was already all over my head about the next big issue to fix. It was today as I sat down that it dawned on me that, damnn, what an ungrateful bunch have I been. Not intentionally, but we are all moving at the speed of light that we forget to enjoy the small wins. Just a few days ago, I had no idea how I would deal with that situation, and the moment I passed it, it was like, unto the next. "No congratulations Favour" Just small "thank You, Jesus," and boom, we resume worrying about the next thing. So how about we take a break? How about we actually sit with the things that worked out? How about we allow ourselves to be amazed by the pra...
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ESAU WAS NOT THE POOR TWIN.

Gbam!!! Special thanks to T30 family morning devotion. Going through the book of Genesis has been a really fun ride for me, and on today's devotion, something was said that struck me. You know the way we were told the story of Esau and Jacob in children’s church. Jacob, a conniving thief, steals Esau’s birthright and then his blessing, and Esau was left with nothing and he wept. I had somehow always felt bad for Esau and wondered why God would allow such great injustice to happen to him, but going through Genesis recently on T30, I’ve come to see this same story differently. Yes, Jacob and his mother were a conniving bunch, however, Esau was not cursed. He was blessed too, but not in the same way Jacob was. When Esau came crying to Isaac after Jacob had taken the blessing, Isaac still blessed him. He told him that he would live by the sword, that he would serve his brother, but then he said something interesting: “When you grow restless, you will throw his yoke from off your neck.”...
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IMPERFECT HUMAN.

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The thing with being disappointed by people is that it is often tied to our expectations of them. We expect that they know better, that they should do better, that they should somehow be better. We often place people on a pedestal that is unreasonably high, and in doing so, we set ourselves up to be hurt when they inevitably fall short of it. People are not one thing. If they were, perhaps it would be easier to make a verdict, to conclude that someone is either a this or that. It would be so much easier to validate our rage if there weren't sides to people that are utterly delightful. If the person who hurt us wasn't also the person who once made us laugh until our stomachs hurt. If the person who disappointed us wasn't also kind, thoughtful, generous, or loving in other moments. But that's the thing about being human. We are complicated. We are perfectly imperfect. We have flaws, shortcomings, bad days and baggage we are still learning how to carry, we get things wrong...
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There’s this thing the older generation does that I find so annoying: they struggle to accept fault or apologize. I was talking to a friend about it the other day, and she said, “They would rather swallow a bottle than admit they were wrong.” And honestly, I find it crazy because the reality is that we don’t have forever with the people in our lives. So, ego aside, we have to make the effort. Apologize when you’re wrong. Compliment people. Check in. Say the things you sometimes assume they already know. People need to know that they are important to you. They shouldn’t have to keep guessing where they stand in your life or whether you care. Dearest reader, as adults, we should do better. We should learn to say “I’m sorry” instead of acting like the hurt never happened. We should tell people they matter while we still have the chance. Love should not always have to be inferred from our actions. Sometimes, say it. Sometimes, show it. Sometimes, just make it obvious. favvy_Okwansđź–¤.
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“Maybe sometimes life rigs things in our favour.” ~ X It may not always look like it, but somehow, things often work themselves out one way or another. It may seem like you’ve reached the end, but at the end of the day, you may just find yourself exactly where you needed to be. Think about Jonah running away from his calling to Nineveh. In some strange way, even his running seemed to become part of the story. He fell from the ship, was swallowed by a great fish, stayed there for three days, and was eventually spat out. What the people of Nineveh saw was a prophet emerging from the belly of a fish, and there’s an interesting layer to that story because some historical accounts associate the worship of Dagon in Nineveh with fish imagery. Think about the odds of how timely that was. Dearest reader, there’s a quote I came across that I really love. It says, “It may seem like you’re drowning or buried, but really, you’re being planted.” And there’s something beautiful about that. A seed has...
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 Today my half blind screen phone fell and well, didn’t make it. I’ve had a crappy day to start with and I didn’t have the strength to deal , I just picked it up and went home.  On my way home, I really oddly enjoyed the wind on my hair while on bike, it was really refreshing. I felt I’d be angry enough to cry or throw a fit but I was too exhausted, exhausted from everything I had to carry recently , I didn’t have the strength. So I just enjoyed my ride home, had a cold bath, and crawled up in bed thinking about some fantasy yada before I remembered, I had to write my so called content of the day. The point is, you can be so exhausted that your response to tragedy is calm, because you’ve lost it so many times that it doesn’t make sense to anymore. Like you’ve cried so much you realize on your own that crying doesn’t cut it, you just are, tired. KingAtha was like , “you should be falling apart being phoneless and all” and what came to mind was this particular patient from grey’...
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A ceiling collapsed, but a life was saved.

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On today’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy, there’s this particular patient who genuinely believes the world is against him. He says things always crash and burn around him, his expectations are at zero, so whenever something unfortunate happens, he is neither pissed nor surprised. It’s almost like he expects disaster to find him. For instance, on his way to X-ray, the wheelchair suddenly broke. While he was advised to sit still and wait for his doctor to get him another one, he insisted he could walk. A few steps later, he fell and hit his head. As if that wasn’t enough, during his MRI, there was a leak from the roof that caused a mini explosion. And then, to top it all off, during his surgery, with his body open on the operating table, the ceiling collapsed and debris fell into his body. It was horrible. At this point, you’d probably think, “Okay, the universe really does hate this man.” But maybe not. After the collapse, the doctors had to thoroughly clean his body to make sure they remov...
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A friend reached out today and reminded me of a piece I wrote on October 15th, 2024, titled “Not Admitted.” It was a very emotional piece for me because I could vividly remember the day I wrote it, where I was, what I was doing, and exactly how I was feeling. It was one rainy afternoon. I was at the Moniepoint office, waiting to be attended to, I had to wait for a while, and I had already had a crazily stressful morning. I remember sitting there, exhausted and tired of all the congratulatory messages on the aspirant group chat, so I checked my JAMB CAPS for the umpteenth time, and the words “Not Admitted” staring back at me broke my tiny heart. I remember crying there while it rained outside, not minding that I was in a public space. I remember how suffocated I felt, how much of a failure I felt, how hurt I was, and how badly I wished I could just will my admission into reality. It was one of the few times I have felt such deep despair. Looking back now, it has been two years, and I di...
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“Your will to live can sustain you when you are sick, but if you lose it, your last hope is gone.” ~ Proverbs 18:14 In watching Grey’s Anatomy for the past few weeks, one thing that has really struck me is those moments when the surgeons get to a point where they have done all they can, and what is left is the patient’s will to survive and, of course, God’s intervention. I notice it especially during heart transplant surgeries. They replace the failing heart with a new one, and then there’s this momentary struggle, this tense silence where everyone waits for the patient’s body to accept the new heart and for it to beat on its own. It’s crazy because at that point, there’s seemingly nothing more the surgeons can do. They just wait for the body to fight for itself, and that fight, that desperate attempt to keep going, is what we call the will to live. Another instance was when they had done all they could for a patient and were simply waiting to see if the patient would wake up. The fami...
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People are exactly what they seem to be.

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Actions reveal who a person is, regardless of what is said. Oftentimes, people show us exactly who they are, but we tend to make excuses for them, whereas sometimes, that is just them. You know that thing where you feel someone is a certain way at first, and then later convince yourself that it’s just a front? That they are probably good people deep down and are only pretending to be jerks? Most times, they are actually just jerks, and we want so badly to see the good in people that we explain away everything that tells us otherwise. Somebody is exhibiting toxic behaviour and you’re like, “He’s a good guy at heart, he’s just putting up a front.” Oga, he may not be putting up a front. In fact, most of the time, the people we are making excuses for are exactly what they seem to be. We just don’t want to believe it. That’s why my friend Jnie always says that whenever she has an off feeling about someone and brushes it off as her overthinking or reading too much meaning into something that...
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“Do unto others what you want others to do to you.” ~ X I was watching a commentary on a chapter of the Bible I’ve read before, and something stood out to me in a way I had never seen before. We all remember the story in Genesis 27, where Jacob, with the help of his mother, plays a fast one on his father and brother, right? He deceives Isaac and takes the blessing meant for Esau. Afterwards, he has to flee to his mother’s family for safety because Esau wants to kill him. Now, here’s the interesting part: one of the first major things that happens to Jacob after leaving home is that he gets deceived too. He meets Laban, falls in love with Rachel, and agrees to work for him for seven years so he can marry her. Seven whole years. Only to wake up after the wedding and realise he had been given Leah instead. Laban had cheated him. And honestly, it’s giving, “What goes around comes around.” Jacob had deceived his brother, and now he was on the receiving end of deception himself. The irony is...
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There’s such a thing as speaking up and not being heard. I had never really thought about it before, but now I get it. Speaking and being heard are completely different things. To speak up is one thing, the one thing we are told we are free to do, the one thing we are encouraged to share, the one thing that is somehow our fundamental human right. But to be heard, actually heard, not just listened to, but intentionally understood in the way you mean to be understood, that is something entirely different. Because you can pour out the entirety of your heart and people would still hear what they want to hear. You could try diplomacy, and somehow rudeness would be picked out from between words you never said, you could explain yourself until you run out of ways to explain, and still walk away knowing nothing you said actually reached them. You learn quickly that talking about it doesn’t necessarily help it. Talking about it doesn’t solve it, talking about it doesn’t make it disappear, talki...
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