Last week I met a couple of nice people – you know the type of people you hope and pray you have in your corner regularly if not always. They made me laugh and yes, I got away with being my happy mischievous self 😎 gosh, what a mix.

Later however, I noticed two out of these bunch were not as cheerful as they originally appeared to be. I even heard them ‘gossiping’ about someone, and I felt so bad.

How could this be? Was I imagining things? How could they have changed so suddenly? Were they pretending in the first instance? My shock was worsened by the fact that I knew one of these two to be a Christian, I mean we had talked ‘church talk’ and laughed ‘church laugh’ and all of that! You bet this was quite disheartening for me.

In the midst of my disappointment, I withdrew from both of them, still maintaining an occasional joke every now and then, while I tried as much as possible to maintain my typical demeanor. I kept wondering if they were pretending when I first met them which made me withdraw even more.

Then I thought of the passages in the Bible where Christ stated that a city upon a hill cannot be hidden; and you do not light a lamp and put it under a bowl; but this current situation just felt like a manifestation of these and I was somewhat saddened.

You see, because we had talked ‘church talk’ and laughed ‘church laugh’ my expectations of them were very high. She was a city upon a hill, she wasn’t hidden, but there she was falling short of the ‘standard’! She was a lamp which was meant to shine in the dark, but she had (whether temporarily) hidden herself and her light under a bowl by ‘going the way of the world’ and gossiping.

When I couldn’t take her new cold attitude anymore (well I had forgiven her for gossiping – lol forgiven her as if that was in my place) I asked her (I think I even rolled my eyes ‘inside me’ sef) why she was cold, and she blurted out that she had a lot on her mind. I tickled her a little saying everything was going to be ok.

Ummm, we all are work in progress and we fall sometimes, but what matters is that we do not stay down. She didn’t apologize for being cold (yep, I rolled my eyes at the thought of that) while I felt bad about myself for not just sucking it and forgiving seventy times seven times.

Oh my…! This our walk is a full time ‘walk’. This mountain top business is real business and the focus on us because of the light we carry means we have to consistently go the extra mile and ‘shine’ against all odds.

May our lights continue to shine before the world that people may see us and glorify our Lord which is in Heaven; and the mountain top? Well…! What can I say? That too comes with the terrain, and we have just got to accept the fact that as Christians and believers, the world would always have expectations of us! May we not fall short in Jesus name, amen!

Shalom, hugs and kisses!