A rough
diamond is a story about how good can come out of something bad, how beauty can
come out of ashes, and how a life can be miraculously transformed in spite of a
supposed tragedy. Even though Sharon died, the victory is in the fact that she
lived her life to the full; she fulfilled the very purpose for which she was
born and left footprints in the sound of life.
After Sharon’s passing, it was strongly impressed in
my heart to write her story. I wanted the world to read her story. Perhaps,
some will be lifted out of depression and come to find joy in life again;
having courage to start afresh and do more in spite of what life has thrown at
them. Some of us may never discover the precious diamond within us until we
face a big mountain, a challenge, a tragedy that appears larger than life
itself.
God has a purpose in every problem. He uses problems
to draw us closer to him. Your most profound intimate experience of worship
with God will likely be during the darkest period of your life; when the pain
is most, when you run out of options, when there is no other alternative. That
is when we pray our most authentic and heartfelt prayer of dedication.
Joni Eareckson Tada notes, “When life is rosy, we
may slide by with knowing about Jesus, with imitating and quoting him. Only in
suffering do we know him. Rick Warren
wrote – Problems forces us to look to God and depend on him instead of ourselves. We will never know that God is all we need
until God is all we‘ve got. According to him, No matter the cause, nothing can
happen to us without the Lord’s will. Whatever happened to a Christian is
father filtered and he intends to use it for good. Because God is sovereign,
tragedies are just accidents in God’s good plan for us.
This book is not about HIV, though its effect on a
human body can be devastating on the soul of its victim. For those who are
living with HIV/AIDS. That is not the end of the world. You can live a happy
and resourceful life like Sharon did when she decided to look away from the tragedy that befell her. Till the end, she
was a happy and fulfilled woman. You can be and do anything you want to if you
believe.
For friends and relatives of those living with
HIV/AIDS, the worst thing you can do is reject and treat them with disdain. In
so doing, you are sending them to an early grave as that can be emotionally
unbearable. They need a daily dose of
affection, love and approval. I must emphasize that hugging and displaying your
affection towards an infected person will not make you infected.
To those who have had to endure a terrible tragedy or loss, you can choose to
either wallow in self-pity or turn the situation around. You have to choose
between allowing the situation drag you down or you rise above the painful
experience. It is a choice only you have to make. The whole of creation backs
whatever decision you make. I encourage you to make a silver lining around the
cloud of your life. Madame Guyon said that it is the fire of suffering that
brings forth the gold of godliness.
Also, from this story, we discover that death is not
the end of human existence. The body dies and decays, but the soul of man lives
on in eternity. One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of
my body-- but not the end of me.
I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going
to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress
rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in
eternity. We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life
is not going to make sense. Life is a series of problems: you are in one now,
you are just coming out of one, or you are getting ready to go into another
one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than
your comfort; God is more interested in making your life holy than he is in
making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that is
not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.
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