So, imagine someone on the safety team of your office triggers the fire alarm to carry out a fire drill. Doesn’t everyone have to ‘hand’s off’ everything that they were busying about? Isn’t this kind of like what we’ve experienced?
Fire drills basically are done as a test with the long-run intention of making the organisation or building all the better in the end. Fire drills help to…
1. Check the reaction of the occupants/employees of the building. This reveals how well people have been trained and how prepared they are to respond to adverse unforeseen circumstances.
2. Check the functioning and alertness/response time of the System and the Management/Leadership. I.e. it can identify gaps in the system that need to be addressed ASAP before ‘D-day’.
If I were to relate this to our lives, the way the world as we knew it came to a ‘Pause’ suddenly can ‘test’ three critical areas of our lives: The Depth of our Faith, The Strength of our Leadership, and The Quality of our Relationships.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
How have you been faring, in your Faith, with your Relationships, and in the roles in which you stand as a ‘Leader’?
In Faith, have you experienced Fear or has your Faith waxed stronger having been able to ‘retreat’, dig deep and have even deeper fellowship with God? Have you enjoyed the assurance of who God is in your life and drawn comfort from being reminded of your destiny in Him? Have you been able to share your faith with your family and those around you? Or like the 5 ‘other Virgins’, did you discover you don’t have ‘enough’ even to sustain you how much more to share?
How about the capacities we each stand in as ‘Leaders’? I know that when the word ‘Leader’ is mentioned, it is the obvious set of people that come to mind: our dear Politicians, Presidents and Heads of Nations, Leaders of World Organisations, State Governors and their counterparts, Religious Leaders, etc.… and indeed they are. These people have been and are still under immense pressure because every decision they make in these trying times have multiple levels of impact. What ‘should’ they do? We’ll continue to pray for them.
There are however, less obvious ‘Leaders’; the likes of you and I that we should evaluate. As Parents: Husbands and Fathers, Wives and Mothers; Children: Older siblings and the younger ones. How about in our work places? Business Owners, CEO’s, Human Resources and Team Leaders? In our immediate communities; the many civil groups, NGOs, Estate EXCOs, etc.
What examples have we been showing, what decisions have we had to make and how are the decisions we’ve taken so far going down? What decisions are we going to make and what impact will they make now and in the long-run? Are they sustainable? Do we have the capacity to turn the course of these decisions should we discover as we go on that they were not good for our families, employees or businesses?
Finally, how are our relationships doing? You know, the ones that should matter to us. Did this test show you what you already knew to be true or were you rudely awakened to the realities you were probably hiding from admitting?
For relationships, I find that they are two categories; the first being those who had it good or great already, and the second are those who had it ‘not-so-great’.
If you are of the former category, those who have it good or great, don’t relent. Do what you can continually to keep the embers burning!
For the latter category though, it’s sad because there never has been so much strain put further on it having been stripped of the room to ‘escape’ that our regular routines used to provide. True colours are being exposed and newer dimensions of responses are emerging. Does this describe you? How are you holding up? What can be done different?
Is this period repairing or destroying your relationships? What do you want to do about it? What’s your motivation or driving force? It could be time to evaluate what these relationships mean and what you truly want to do with them…now and in the long run.
Remember, although a Fire drill somewhat interrupts our activities, the intentions are for good in the long run. Whether you choose to view this period as a rude awakening or a harmless routine ‘drill’, It would do good to make use of it as a TIME TO IMPROVE on the many levels and areas of our lives that matter.
The Bad can be made Good, the Good made Better and Better, Best. In fact, it doesn’t stop there; every BEST CAN BE MADE EVEN BETTER!
There is always room for improvement and the opportunities to improve are constantly before us lockdown or not. The onus remains on everyone personally to evaluate and decide:
“What do I choose to believe?”
“What do I want of my relationships?”
“What type of Leader do I Want to be?”
Let’s come out better not just because we can, but because we deserve better!
by Miriam Balogun