Called To Serve; Differently.

DON EBUBEOGU 

People do not elect themselves to serve God. The scripture made it clear that God calls his servants.

Jeremiah 1:5 gives credence to this when it says, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.”

I assumed, rightly or wrongly, that I was called to serve God as an ordained servant. I went to the Seminary to get my vocational training. I followed the teachings and the regulations judiciously and got prepared for public service.

Life in the seminary was exciting. The rigours of the training, the disciple and stoicism refine your mind and character if you live through the system wholly.

At the critical stage of my vocation, I decided to quit based on existential family reasons.

Incidentally, I left with lots of learning and teachings. More so, not before I discovered the school library where I stumbled on books containing rare expository of philosophy and life. Some of these philosophies became the principles directing my thoughts and actions.

It was in one of the Catholic books that I got the first more precise definition of SIN, which describes sin as “an offence against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is a failure in genuine love for God and neighbour caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity. It has been defined as “an utterance, a deed, or a desire contrary to the eternal law.”

I also stumbled on some of the writings of St. Augustine, a foremost Catholic theologian, and took eternal note and became guided by some of his philosophies like where he wrote, “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe”. Again he posited that “He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.”

Several years after I took solace in the escapades of Jonah by running away from my vocation, the Organized Private Sector in Onitsha made me the President of the Onitsha Chamber of Commerce. I hurried my tenure and left with my tails between my legs.

Just this Friday, while I was about to be inducted into the Elders’ Committee of the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, I got a call from Pa Ngonadi that South East elders nominated me into the Executive Council of the Nigerian Association of Chambers of Commerce.

When I glanced at the list of men in the elders’ committee, I knew somebody or a group were playing plank with my youthfulness.

When I called my Celestine Ebubeogu (who is, actually, the Chairman of Tiger Foods Ltd) to narrate my ordeal that Friday, instead of giving me the support to take the route of Jonah and abscond from this forced vocational conscriptions, he was instead congratulating me for becoming an elder.

In the borrowed mood of St. Augustine, I now firmly believe that those who made you an elder without your help will not restore your youth without your consent.

– Don Ebubeogu is of the Tiger Foods Limited