Strange Packaging

Dear lovely people,

“Sometimes life gives us lessons sent in ridiculous packaging.” Says Dar Williams.

That day was Chetongo’s 35^th birthday. Despite all the numerous gifts he had received from loved ones, he looked up with great expectation to what his father was to offer him. At the back of his mind, he knew for sure that his father will give him his dream car as a birthday gift.

Then, the much awaited phone call cam-in, Chetongo answered the call. His father’s energetic voice came on loud and clear from the other end of the line. He told his son that his gift was in an envelope on the table in his study. Chetongo waited impatiently for the phone call to end and when his father dropped the line, off he went to the study where, he found the envelope with his father’s beautiful calligraphy on it.

It was a lengthy letter, full of insight but certainly not what Chetongo expected. His jaws fell at the end of the letter, it actually ended with a description of the location of a rock on a hill in the neighborhood under which a Bible was hidden. Chetongo’s father instructed him to go get the Bible and to study it well for it was going to give him all the gifts and prosperity he ever wanted in life.

It was a battered and dejected Chetongo who left the study, feeling as if all the troubles of the world had been thrown on him. How could he contain the fact that all his well-to-do father could give him as a birthday gift was a simple Bible and kept far-off so that he will have to again trek and spend energy to go get it.

Twenty years later, Chetongo who subsequently failed in most of the endeavors he carried out, decided to comeback home and make use of the land his late father left him. While they were digging on the land, they came across the stone his Father had mentioned in the letter on his birthday. He decided to check around for the Bible and did find it. Inside the Bible were the keys of his dream car and a check of a million dollars accompanied by a small note his father had left instructing him to invest the money in the business he had always dreamed of creating. The tears that came rolling down Chetongo’s cheeks that day were uncontrollable.

It was the worst day of his life especially imagining that he had moved out of their family home in anger and only returned after his father’s death. He came back so frustrated with the system in the country which according to him will not enable him succeed. Meanwhile all along, there was the car of his dreams and enough money that would have enabled him to start his dream business of selling cars.

Sometimes, the things we seek most, come to us in very strange packaging. How far you can see beyond that packaging plays a central role in determining how far you will rise in life. Everybody who walks the planet earth is loaded with a package of gifts from God but some people for a plethora of reasons never get to open their package and so they remain behind lamenting.