The saying goes the man who has not found a course for which he is prepared to die, has not really began to live. Posted to the North eastern state of Taraba Nigeria, in the early 2000s as a young graduate, the life and story of Rev. Joshua Adah is one that typifies sacrifice. Bubbling with life and full of dreams when he was going for his national youth service, he lacked only one thing, the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. As he often loved to share, it was in Jalingo, Taraba state that he truly began to live after he had come to know the love of Christ. The passion of this new found love was burning so hard that at the end of the service year, he could no longer return back home. He had made the ultimate decision, to serve God and do His will whatever the cost may be. Indeed the cost was not cheap, his path too was not one that would have attracted many. Yet for the love of God and man, he felt no price was too much. Leaving behind the allure of city life and rejecting the comfort of well paying jobs, he took to the unreached and uknown villages of Taraba state and spent his love, time and indeed his life touching and changing lives. With His wife (and then children) besides him, he worked everyday of his life, to give life, hope and joy to the poor and unreached. For the orphans He laboured to school and house them. He clothed, schooled and fed the poor while he gave to them the message of the gospel. I met this Hero in 2012 when I was posted to Jalingo,Taraba state for my national youth service (over a decade afer he served there himself) and from the first encounter I had with him, I could not get him out of my heart. The questions his life both raised and answered in my heart are too numerous for me to list here. When eventually I was opportuned to visit his mission field, I was moved beyond words by the work this servant of God was doing for humanity. Indeed I knew him for too short a time to be qualified as one who can speak about his life. Yet I know he was a loving husband and a good father. This man even in the midst of the political and religous turmoil that besets our nation went accross borders to share the love of God and while many jostled for power and the control of our national resources, he went from place to place, using all he had to care for the poor. It was in one of these journeys that Rev. Joshua adah was ambushed and hacked to death by fulani herds men. I have cried and kicked not because he is lost, but because our ailing world just loss a solution. Our corrupt and greedy world just lost a selfless epitome of integrity. we lost a saint but Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints (Psalm 116:15) Rest on uncle Joshua, your fire will continue burning
Posted on: Sat, 24 Jan 2015 09:49:05 +0000