Can you see the burning bush?

Life will not reward your excuses, no matter how appealing they appear or how convincing they sound. What life rewards are your decisions and the actions consequent on them. In several societies of the world like Asia, Africa and even some parts of Europe, people are conditioned to think that the circumstances of their birth also define their limits of achievements. The caste system makes people believe that the class that you were born into is the class in which you die. By this logic, if you were born a peasant, you could never become a noble, a world view largely ingrained in the consciousness of people raised in those parts. This is what fuels the myth of defining people from the royal family as blue-blooded while others are said to have red blood. Reality debunks such claim and success does not respect such dichotomy. Humans, unlike animals, have the capacity to change their circumstanceeven if it means changing their environment.

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Sustainable success is principle-driven. It is no respecter of race. It is colour-blind. It does not respond to luck or circumstances of birth. True success is a highly spiritual matter because it entails doing things that only humans are wired to do but uncomfortable to status quo. One of it is the capacity to change circumstances that make us function below what we believe we were created for. Other ingredients in the mix include the choices we make, a commitment to personal development, and discipline, matched with hard, sometimes gritty work! Starting life poor and unsung is not a crime. Remaining so is what should be worrisome.

Les Brown is a successful author and motivational speaker who has made a fortune from inspiring others. But he was a dyslexic whose teachers didn’t believe could learn anything. He moved past his limitations and became one of the world’s most renowned motivational speakers whose work has touched several Fortune 500 companies and audiences around the world. Richard LeMieux became a successful author and motivational speaker. But before then, he was a homeless man who slept in his car and took food rations from the Salvation Army. His change must have come when he discovered that his status quo was incongruent with his ideal. The names Felix Zandman, Jack Trammel, Fred Kort, Williams Konar may not mean much to you. But they all became billionaires. William Konar is the founder of CVS Pharmacy, one of America’s largest pharmaceutical chains. Jack Trammel founded Commodore Computers in the dawn of the computer age and became highly successful. Fred Kort invented the soap bubble-making machine. His company, the Los Angeles Toy company became highly successful, selling children’s toys. Zandman is the proprietor of Vishay Intertechnology, a major supplier of electronic items to the computer and aviation industries. In his lifetime, Nathan Shapell was one of the biggest home builders in California. There was nothing in the background of any of these people that could have recommended them for success if truly failure or success was a fait-accompli based on pedigree, race or status. These ones, even if they were born with the proverbial silver spoon in their mouth, had the spoon brutally yanked off their mouths before their palate could begin to taste  the food being brought into it. All of them were Jews who were victims of the Holocaust of World war II that saw Hitler gassing about three million Jews to death in various concentration camps. They all arrived the USA at various times on refugee ships. Konar was only twelve when he was hauled into a concentration camp with his entire family. The other members of the family were eventually murdered in the Holocaust. He was only sixteen when he arrived the USA and he spent a number of years in a foster home.  Jack Trammel was the lone survivor in his family. On his arrival in the USA, he first worked as a janitor. Later, he enlisted in the US Army where he learnt to repair office machines. Upon his discharge, he ventured into the business of fixing typewriters and later, computers.

The testimonies of these men are eloquent proof of the truism that a man’s background is not enough excuse for his back to remain on the ground. Indeed, no man has fallen until he begins to say that someone pushed him!

The story of Moses in the Bible provides a template here that can be applied to the human condition and the necessity for taking responsibility for the change we desire. Moses ran away from Egypt because he had murdered an Egyptian while defending a fellow Israeli. He promptly went on self –exile when it was becoming a known fact that he was the culprit. Forty years later, while he was keeping the flock of his father-in –law in the backside of the desert, he was greeted with a strange sight. He saw fire within a bush burning. Nothing strange you would say. Except for the fact that the bush remained intact in spite of the raging fire! Moses turned aside to further interrogate what was playing out. Then God spoke to him and delivered his life mandate to him. That moment marked the beginning of a new trajectory of significance for an 80-year old man who many, including himself would have written off as too old to become significant, especially since his first attempt forty years earlier got him to where he now found himself. Moses went from there to begin a new phase of life that saw him leading the children of Israel for forty years in the exodus from Egypt. He had an option. He could have declined, despite God’s assurances to him. As a stutterer, he had what seemed a good excuse. He actually wanted God to try someone else for the job! God would have none of that.

The burning bush spectacle was not exclusively for Moses. Many other people must have seen it and simply walked past it to pursue other inanities but which they considered important. It is so easy to let life happen to us so much that we fail to heed the signals of opportunities that God throws at us to change and to grow. The call to Moses through the fire was such an invitation. To go out on a limb. To do something out of comfort zone. To face new giants and conquer new territories. To stop making excuses for shortcomings and to embrace a future with uncharted possibilities and miraculous outcomes.

After God secured Moses’ attention and compliance, no further reference was made to the burning bush. The circumstances we find ourselves in are not as important as the purpose that they serve. They only matter in the context of the bigger picture that God always wanted us to see but which we were too distracted to notice. The milestone must never be mistaken for the destination. If where you are now is not paying tribute to your call to significance, look around you. Can you see the fire burning? Your attention is required!

Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!

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