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ON SILENCE AND SACRIFICE (PART 3)

In the orbit of divine matters, intensely religious people devote special time to commune with God through meditation. But a lot of history figures did this too. Chief Obafemi Awolowo did it. Mahatma  Gandhi used to do this. Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States and a lawyer who 
bequeathed an indestructible legacy to the legal profession and society did. There is a story that when he went to the church in Washington D.C., he used to sit in a small chapel behind the church and 
some children wondered who the tall, lonely man was.

One Sunday, they followed his foot-marks in the soil and they ended at the White House! So much did Lincoln seek solitude to be alone on his own. Each of us need moments of solitude; “times to stand and stare.” It helps to focus our minds and to concentrate on spiritual values. Even Jesus is portrayed in the gospels as withdrawing from his disciples into solitude. In his anguish, just before his betrayal by Judas, our Lord Jesus withdrew to commune with the father and to ask whether the cup could pass.



Concentration and meditation can only be through discipline and self-control. Discipline is power and meditation is a source of self-control. Discipline is extremely important. The Roman Empire disintegrated when discipline eroded the national fabric causing national decay.

Chief Obafemi Awolowo, once said that the spirit of a disciplined person can perforate the walls of incarceration. In The Allocutus, he said, ipsissima verba;

“The spirit of man knows no barrier, never dies and can be projected into any part of the world.”
                                              

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