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Mr David always talks about faith, how it is the evidence of things hoped for, how a person’s faith is the most important piece of their success, that having faith in God, or just having faith in something generally, was the first step to succeeding in life. He tells people how his life is evidence of his faith in God.
Faith in the things he believes, and faith in the things and people that surround him, he is never worried about what tomorrow holds because he has faith that is strong enough to move mountains and mighty enough to declare good things into his life. He was indeed a motivation to a lot of young people and even to every other person around him.
John was going through a lot for a long time. He had graduated from the university and had done his NYSC for ten years now. He remembers how he thought to himself that after his college education, he would get a good job and would settle down in two years or less along the line. He was always cheerful and happy that his life had been moving at the pace he wanted it to.
John had graduated from secondary school at the age of 16 and had gained admission to study Engineering at the University of Technology, Minna. He graduated from college five years later and will go for his service year in Jos, Plateau State.
Everything became different when he came back after completing his youth service year in Jos. John will have stayed home for a whole year applying for various positions in various firms and government organisations, and had no positive outcome from all of his applications. He became so tired that he became a very depressed youth and started resenting everything and everyone in society.
He was tired of everything and would call it quits with his girlfriend Benita, whom he had hoped he was getting married to when he had gotten a job and was ready to settle. Mr David, who was his neighbour at home, will always sit with him every morning before leaving for work, giving him encouraging words on how life is, and it was only a matter of time before things will be alright, and even better than how he had imagined it to be.
He will sometimes tell him tales of how life was with him after he graduated from college and how he had also suffered for more than two years being unemployed, and his situation was so bad that he was not living with his parents, just like John was and will sometimes go hungry for days and will have nothing to eat.
All these were encouraging to John and revived his hope. On most days when he was down in the evening, he looked forward to his talk with Mr David the next morning. He will later find out that Mr David came from a wealthy home and had never known what suffering was. He had gone to the best schools in the country for his primary and secondary school education and was a graduate from Harvard University, holding his first and second degrees from Harvard University coming out with a first class in two of his degrees.
And as soon as he was done with his youth service, a managing position was waiting for him at one of the topmost firms in the country. He had never known what it was like to be in his position, but he would soon find out as the fate of Mr David came to a turn.
It happened on the 1st of April, Mr David's company was involved in a scandal and being in the top leadership and the fall guy of the company, his assets were frozen, and his lifestyle was something he could not maintain as he had nothing he could survive on.
As soon as John heard about the incident, he went into Mr David's apartment the next morning to check up on Mr David. He came to find Mr David with a bottle of hypo disinfectant and a bottle of insecticide in both hands, trying to decide which of the two he would drink first to end his life.
At the shock of this, John ran towards Mr David, summoning up the courage to collect both of what he was holding at the same time to stop Mr David from attempting to take his life. Mr David will plead with John to let him end his life, saying he cannot live his life with such brokenness, having nothing.
But sir, you have suffered before from the story you have told me about yourself, going hungry and with nothing to eat until your faith paid off. If you could do it then, surely, you can do it now, as you rightly say, with life there is hope.
This was when John came to find out from Mr David that he never knew what hunger or poverty was, that he had always been a privileged child, coming from wealth and had remained so all his life.
John will stand there, gazing at Mr David, the man he had respected for so long. He realized that Mr David was a great hypocrite. Telling him to always have faith and withstand pressures for years, yet he had just a day to experience frustration and could barely endure a day. His faith was as strong as the money in his bank account, and with his bank account frozen, his faith has also become frozen.
Thank you for reading through my post. My name is@rishagamo, and above is my response to the week’s prompt “HYPOCRISY”.
@theinkwell/the-inkwell-combined-writing-prompt-26--fiction-or-creative-nonfiction
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