By Olubunmi Adebayo
*When you are rejected, and someone else is accepted in your place, then you must be careful how you handle your feelings and reactions thereafter.*
*This is because you will rarely find anyone who has been rejected for someone else, and who will not feel bad about it. The only difference is the degree of feeling bad, and how each person handles the aftermath.*
*It will take an unusual dimension of altruism, the super grace of selflessness and total self discipline for one to be so rejected, and someone else is accepted, and the person concerned will not feel ‘bad’ about it.*
*Take for example :*
*1) Do you still remember the story of the 10 brothers of Joseph and their ill feelings towards their younger brother, Joseph?*
*The 10 brothers felt rejected when their father poured his love on Joseph – his child of old age, and pushed them to the backseat.*
*No wonder, they never stopped being hostile towards Joseph.*
*2) Can you still recall a similar scenario between the 7 brothers of David and David in the aftermath of selecting a king for Israel?*
*The 7 brothers all felt bad when David was publicly preferred above them, though they never publicly voiced this out. But you can still deduce this in undercurrent actions and gestures amomg them in later years.*
*Remember that the 7 brothers went through the process of appearing before Samuel for possible selection as king, and none of them was picked.*
*Go and study the interface between David and his most senior brother – Eliab, when David showed interest in confronting Goliath at the epic battle of one man championship confrontation between David and Goliath.*
*In that confrontation between Eliab and David, the least description Eliab had for David was to call him “wayward” for his desire to take on Goliath :*
*1 Samuel 17:[28]And Eliab his eldest brother heard when he spake unto the men; and Eliab’s anger was kindled against David, and he said, Why camest thou down hither? and with whom hast thou left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know thy pride, and the naughtiness of thine heart; for thou art come down that thou mightest see the battle.*
*It was not the boldness of David to confront Goliath that prompted the jerring remarks of Eliab, it was the earlier contest of selecting a king among the sons of Jesse, in which he (Eliab) lost out.*
*3) Do I refer to the example of the ill feelings created when the mother of James and John sought the position of preference for her two sons to sit at the right and left hand sides of Jesus in his kingdom?*
*Do you know that other disciples have started feeling rejected if perhaps their Big Boss (Jesus Christ) would approve of this suspicious public proposal?*
*Matthew 20:[24] And when the ten heard it, they were moved with indignation against the two brethren.*
*Selflessness or no selflessness, humility or no humility, anointing or no anointing, grace or no grace, nobody likes being rejected for someone else.*
*How do you manage yourself if you are confronted with this reality of life?*
*We shall be discussing this in the Reflection of tomorrow, God willing.*
Top of the day to you 👍
©️ Olubunmi S Adebayo.
