Betrayal is Within

Dear God,
Smile naa, pleaseee!
Fine, fine, You’re right, I’m wrong, I’m sorry, biko. (But come on, my silence hasn’t even reached the “70×7 offences” quota You gave Peter, and You’re already vexing like this?)
Father, I know You love me, that one, no doubt. But honestly, I still don’t understand why. I can bet that I am Your most stubborn daughter. I whine, I sulk, I question Your will, I cry over small things… yet You love me like I’m Your only child. Right now, I feel so overwhelmed by that love and a small voice keeps whispering, “You don’t deserve it.” And foolish me, I kinda believe it.

But… thank You.
Surprised? You see, in this my quiet cool-off season, I actually picked up a few wisdom lines.
My mum once said, “The sheep spent its whole life fearing the wolf, but it was the shepherd that finally ate it.”
That proverb haunted my childhood. I used to imagine the poor sheep, trusting, obedient, following the shepherd, wagging its tiny tail, not knowing it was marching straight to the slaughterhouse. The betrayal wasn’t outside… it was within.
Life, I’ve come to learn, is full of such ironies.

So, one fateful day, I was sitting at the park after my “exercise” (which was basically ten steps and a long sigh), and mosquitoes suddenly held a conference on my legs. I was slapping left, right, and centre, muttering curses, when I heard a chuckle behind me.
“Just a few pints won’t hurt you, you know,” the old man said.
I turned and laughed. “I wouldn’t mind them taking it, it’s what they’ll leave behind that scares me!”
We both laughed. And somehow, that opened the door for one of those deep, unplanned conversations life sneaks on you.

He told me his name was Mr. Ade, a carpenter.
Now, when I say carpenter, I don’t mean the neat, polished kind who quotes with Excel. I mean the kind whose hands tell stories, rough, cracked, but noble. His slippers looked older than the years some politicians stay in office, and his back curved slightly, the way years of labour bow a man.
He said he was doing a small repair job nearby. Then, like most old souls, one memory led to another until his life poured out like a storybook I didn’t want to close.

Mr. Ade had one son, Tunde. His wife left when the boy was six, saying she couldn’t bear the poverty anymore. But Mr. Ade stayed, carrying the weight of two parents in one calloused pair of hands. He worked as a bricklayer by day, carpenter by evening, and sometimes went to bed hungry so his son wouldn’t.
When Tunde was eight, he once asked,
“Daddy, why do you always come home dirty and with torn clothes?”
“That is my work clothes, my son, I am a bricklayer”, he answered
“Why do you lay bricks?”, he asked
The man smiled and said, “My son, each brick I lift is a stone laid for your future. One day, you’ll stand where I couldn’t, and you’ll thank God.”
And true enough, Tunde grew, excelled, got a scholarship abroad, and became a big man in Lagos.
But success has a way of rearranging memory.
The higher he rose, the smaller his father became in his eyes.

One day, the old man travelled to Lagos to surprise his son. He arrived at the Estate where he built his mansion, but the security guards wouldn’t let him in.
“I want to see my son,” he said.
“Who be your son?” one asked, squinting.
He mentioned Tunde’s name.
They laughed. “Oga, for this kind estate, you no fit enter except he authorises you. Call am make he give you code!”
He called. And called.
No answer.
Yet inside, Tunde was entertaining friends, glasses clinking, laughter echoing, while his father stood outside the gate, trembling from hunger and humiliation.

You know, sometimes life has a way of adding insult to your injury. As he was standing there, a car rolled past the gate. Inside was Tunde’s mother. The same woman who left when poverty came knocking. She saw him, their eyes met, and she looked away, driving in.
“Paapa, you said Oga Tunde na your son, na im car pass just now. Na im mama dey that car, why you no stop them make they carry you?”, the guards urged him.
The old man bowed his head silently and left.
That night, Mr. Ade returned to the village, broken.
I sat there listening, my heart raging storms.

When I finally found my voice, I asked,
“So what did you do afterwards?”
He smiled faintly. “What can I do? He’s still my son. I understand the influences around him. I just pray for him. I got small work in Lagos now, so sometimes I see him. Once in a while, he even gives me carpentry jobs to keep body and soul together.”
I nearly choked.
“Your son, the millionaire, gives you jobs? To ‘keep body and soul together’? He can feed you for life!”
He laughed, that same gentle laugh.
“My daughter, they say half bread is better than chin-chin. At least, I get to see him sometimes. That’s enough. When I look at what he’s achieved, I know my hands moulded greatness. God has blessed my son, even if I’m not part of the blessing.”
My heart wept silently for him. Hmmm…. If loyalty was real, water will not agree to cook fish.

What manner of man talks like this?
In that moment, I remembered the drunken old man from my village who always sang, “Eat, drink, and be merry now, because the sad truth of life is that you may not even be part of the future you’re stressing about.” We all thought he was just looking for an excuse to drink palm wine. But now? Maybe he was right. The reward of hard work isn’t always guaranteed to return to the worker.
As I sat there, I realized, we are all Tunde in one way or another.
This is exactly what we do with Divinity.
We shut the door on the very One who laboured for us.
We take His blessings, wear them like designer robes, and then ignore His knock at our gate.

But You, Lord… You are different. You forgive it and keep forgiving it.
Even when we don’t pick Your call, You keep dialling.
When we lock the gate, You stay outside with gifts in hand.
You bless both the thankful and the unthankful (imagine!)
You pour rain on both the farmer who prays and the thief who steals umbrellas.
So, yes Lord, I’m overwhelmed. Because despite our many “Tunde moments,” You’ve never stopped loving us. You carry us, not because we’ve earned it, but because it’s in Your nature to love.
And that’s why my heart bows in gratitude. Because Your love (unlike human love) never fails, never fades, never gets tired.
This is Your daughter, Lord, unlike Tunde, I am checking in on my Dad.