Opinions of Friday, 28 November 2014

Auteur: Edwin Appiah

Myles oh Myles: Death took a souvenir not a life

For any young person trying to demystify the purpose for living, there can be no greater tragedy than learning of the death of Dr. Myles Munroe.

And yet we cannot even begin to call this a tragedy because Myles actually redefined the meaning of this same word to mean living without a purpose. The world is too much in a hurry to move on when I just wish today will remain today just a little more.

And why not? Because the world is actually moving fast in the direction of its own purpose – collapsing to a calamitous end foretold in the Bible.

The next headlines in the coming days will try to sink the very sad news beneath the front pages. I thank God that he died on Bahamian soil. The product they exported through out the world,has come home dead.

In a criminal justice system where a corrupt politician gets 3 years for stealing and two poor goat thieves share a 100years, you would think that a 1000 others could be sacrificed to allow this man to live.

Reading or listening to Myles Munroe is toxic to conventional thinking. Really toxic. I quit my first job after consuming Munroe’s materials. Incidentally I prayed and yearned for a year to get that job. Myles Munroe made me realize that keeping that job is like a ship sitting at a harbor for tourist to pose with it and take pictures.

Ships are meant for the high and lonely sea – that’s its glory even if it sinks.

You will be depressed by your current life if you listened to him and at the same time a bubbling feeling that life is just about to get exciting. This mild depression is the necessary feeling needed after so much garbage in school called lectures.

If you heaped all the lecture notes in archealogy, classics, philosophy and many others taught in places like the University of Ghana today, it would be a more stinking heap next to the Pantang dump site.

I mean how can the premier university produce at least 60% of its graduates looking for a seat in the office, trying to fill administrative level jobs when there is nothing to administer anyway. What would they be administering? unemployment? or talking to A4 sheets? Sometimes a first class in say Classics can be the same as a certified garbage collector.

So why kraaa are we here? To grow, keep a job?, marry keep a little ranch called family? and rear children to become the next rearing stars? Slaving after life to give those behind us a less burdensome task but still slaving all the same?

The reason why you may be dissatisfied is because you abandoned your hobbies – the little subtle pointers to your own greatness – when you were 12 years old. My friends and I agreed that Myles Munroe’s challenge to live life by first consulting the manufacturer, God was a worthwhile pursuit.

And after many many many months sometimes going without food to seek the face of God, the exact purpose dropped into my being like a powerful sperm fertilizes a willing egg.

It happened one early morning sitting in a chair. And that revelation changed my complexion immediately – eureka – I have found it. How it works out I don’t know. But just as I never inspect the planks underlying my bed before jumping on it every night. So I throw myself into God’s hands as carelessly as drunk driving.

These are things Edwinology’s Lab would rather not talk about but Myles Munroe’s death has become to me what the aura of the court room is to a ordinary man – an intimidating force to spill the beans.

I am a witness to the fact – no – to the truth that - there is an exact, pin-point exact purpose for your life as precise as sharp scissors. Myles Munroe live a life that insured himself against oblivion so much that E-Lab greatly suspects that death took absolutely nothing but an empty shell. Death did not take a life. Death took a souvenir – something you are given at an old school reunion or engagement or a wedding.

Because the real life of Dr. Myles Munroe has been scattered in the minds and lives of the many he touched. This is where Myles lives and death took a body, a book cover, a cassette.

Like a thief gleeful for stealing a mobile phone case only to realize the phone is intact, we can still call Myles Munroe anywhere to talk to him by sitting somewhere quietly to read his books.

He showed us how to live by showing us how to die. And in that painful moment as he embraced death, his body dismembering at the metallic impact, his soul would have held together, flashed an outsmarting mischievous smile, long enough for his spirit to mock and utter Paul’s words – oh death where is thy victory?