by About three years ago I had a conversation with a friend that left me with an overwhelming feeling of ‘stuck’. Interesting stuff was happening in my conversationmate’s career — he was sitting prettily at the top of the Kenyan hierarchy in his office, he was successfully running other personal businesses on the side, he was about to complete his professional papers, and he had an amazing family. On the other hand my life was idling; scratch that, the battery was dead and needed jumpstarting — and what is that noise coming from under the hood?
Is this what envy looks like? Is this the part where Moses tells the Israelites not to covet their neighbour’s career, pixie farm, green Bermuda grass lawn and piggery; where we call coveting ambition, greed industry and hoarding prudence?
There is a thin life between being inspired and competing with the Joneses. I was right there in the second category. Suddenly I felt the need to start projects, pursue another degree, buy a plot, fuga kuku kienyeji, sell shoes from the car boot, import wigs, grow watermelons, hawk plots, employ ten staff, run an empire from my kitchen, ahem, from a corner office on Chiromo Lane… something, anything, just chase the empire. After all wealth and power are the benchmark of achievement.
Where was my ambition? Where was my hunger for success and wealth and power? Why was I being happy with a small life when the world was my stage? Why was I letting others enjoy the cake by themselves like I don’t have digestive juices too?
A week before this incident, someone had shared a modern analogy of the Proverbs 31 woman. And that woman can leave you feeling like a failure. I mean, here I am struggling to cook balanced meals, get CBC homework done on time, keep my thighs from clapping too much and stay employed and this woman is running businesses, investing, travelling abroad, raising kids, keeping a respected husband, employing several people, dressing to daze, making her own embroidery and I can bet she doesn’t have jiggly soldiers.
These two incidents stirred in me seeds of despair, discouragement, discontentment.
Chasing tails
I almost prayed, “God give me the shrewdness of the people of the world who run empire after empire.” I really did almost pray that prayer. Because I felt I needed to be there with the sharks, cutting cryptocurrency deals, getting government tenders, setting up manufacturing plants and voting in global boardrooms in my Louboutin red bottoms. Go big or go home.
But why did I want to be successful like so and so instead of bearing my own fruit, Brenda fruit? Why wasn’t I content running my own race?
Why did I want a seat at the table? Why did I want a name? Why did I want connections and influence? Why did I feel the need to chase things — those things the pagans in Matthew 6:32 were running after, “yet your heavenly Father knows that you need them”?
A small part of me needed to meet real needs in my family and around me. Imagine if I really did run an empire the size of Dangote’s. Youth unemployment in my village would be a byword. My husband and I would quit worrying about retirement savings and education funds for the kids. As if God was unaware that we needed these things! See how we struggle to appropriate the “do not be anxious about your life” scripture to ourselves? Do no be anxious about what you will eat (now and in retirement), what you will wear, where MIT school fees will come from. For those who do not know God seek after all these things. [But as for you, you know your God; you have a Father/ Shepherd; do you know what Fathers do?]. Which of you by worrying can add an hour to his span of life?
Mostly though, a greater part of me was being tuned by rhythms from outside me. The world was fitting me in its mould. This is the way it’s supposed to be. Brenda you are supposed to chase those things. Everyone is chasing them. The world notices you when you score on its terms, so score. You are what you do and what you get paid for so what’s your title? How much money are you making? Who knows you? Who do you influence? Where have you been? What do you drive? Where do you live? Where do your children go to school?
I wanted to feel successful for ego and acclaim, for self sufficiency and fear of missing out, for fear of being judged as a failure, of feeling ‘less-than’, of being ‘nobody’. Talk of ungodly ambition. Digging cisterns that cannot hold water.
Spiritual fruit
But we are not called to chase every deal and opportunity; we are not called to be everything. A sermon I once heard emphasised that Jesus could have been a great carpenter. Or fisherman (he knew where all the big catches were). Or conference speaker. Or teacher. But he didn’t try to be those things. He was focused on his assignment. He didn’t even heal all the people in Galilee and Capernaum. He focused on that which the Father had sent him to do. There is something like succeeding at the wrong assignment. There is striving and achieving goals only to realise that those whole not have been your goals to start with. Your ladder was leaning on the wrong wall.
John Piper in his book, Do not Waste you Life, notes: “The people that make a durable difference in the world are not the people who have mastered many things, but who have been mastered by one great thing.”
Some of us will be called to be Dangote’s to solve the problem of youth unemployment in Africa. And some will be Kipchoge’s who push the limits of what’s humanly possible and inspire others. But some of us will be called to “small lives” – staying at that old job for the rest of our life but having the stability to be present in other spheres, raising children while everyone asks you why you are wasting your skills, doing back-breaking manual work and barely eking but serving as unto God, losing our lives in some forgotten corner of the earth while serving the least of God’s people… having small ambitions by this world’s definition and little to make us be noticed yet bearing great spiritual fruit .
Our lives, in a season or in the entirety, may be mundane and ordinary, physically unremarkable. We might be accused of not being hungry enough; but who can blame us, we have tasted the bread of life and drank from the living well and we thirst no more. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labour on what does not satisfy?
Ambition gets big dreams accomplished for us and for God. But the fall of man was also due to ambition. Eve wanted more knowledge, more life. She wanted to be like God. The tower of Babel too was a result of ambition. Even heaven noticed.
Ambition gets big dreams accomplished for us and for God. But the fall of man was also due to ambition. Eve wanted more knowledge, more life. She wanted to be like God. The tower of Babel too was a result of ambition
If we want to redeem our ambition, we have to start by understanding that our time is limited. We don’t know how much longer we will be around. We are only guaranteed today. Our lives really, are like a breath. May God give us the wisdom to understand this that we may live wisely.
We must do the works of Him who sent us while its day, for night comes when no man can work. What are the works of Christ?
Colossians 3:1 tells us to set our hearts on things above where Christ is seated and not on earthly things.
What’s in Christ’s pulse and viewpoint as he sits beside his Father’s throne?
Reverend John Stott in his book Godly Ambition wrote: “In the end, just as there are only two kinds of piety, the self-centered and the God-centered, so there are only two kinds of ambition: one can be ambitious for oneself or for God. There is no third alternative. Ambitions for self may be quite modest (enough to eat, to drink, and to wear, as in the Sermon [on the Mount]) or they may be grandiose (a bigger house, a faster car, a higher salary, a wider reputation, more power). But whether modest or immodest, these are ambitions for myself — my comfort, my wealth, my status, my power. Ambitions for God, however, if they are to be worthy, can never be modest. There is something inherently inappropriate about cherishing small ambition for God. God’s primary concern is not our accomplishments, it’s our heart. (1 Sam 16:7)”
Dealing with my heart
My trust in God used to falter in case He defined success differently from me. I was scared that after seeking His kingdom and his righteousness, all those other things [chicken farm et al] may not be added unto me. The apostasy! Instead of bowing before God’s word and will, here I was trying to evaluate, rationalise, second guess, create my own fail-proof future. As if I could even guarantee my next breath!
Yet Jesus was extending an invite like that he gave to the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well: “If you only knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink…”
What God asks of us is so little compared to the vastness of the riches that he calls us to in Christ Jesus. If we only knew who it is that asks us of anything — a drink of water, our time, our gifts, our allegiance, our witness, our lives… we would be like Andrew and John and Andrew, those first disciples, who left everything and followed Christ on account of his witness alone, without ever seeing a miracle or sign
While there are many pastures out there, we specifically have been called to be the sheep of his pasture (Psalm 100:3) — to be dependent on where he leads, what he feeds; to hear his call and hearken. To be contented with where he leads. To not wander far away from our shepherd and his pasture. To accept his protection and covering and correction. To feed from his pasture. It’s only in His will that we are free.
God help me find my greatest satisfaction in you.
