The priceless value of encouragement

Questions sometimes do not come verbally. At times, over and over again, you might have been asked a lot of questions multiple times. Your answer may only vary from time to time with answers varying in speech, conduct, attitude, character and words.

What does encouragement mean to you?

Tunmise happened to be a young child with a potential far beyond his wildest imaginations. With whatever he had around him, he could bring out the beauty from them and reveal the perfect taste of creativity. As a young child in his teens, his expectations from life and what life could offer was great.

One day, he got inspired by a dried leaf to produce a work of art. As he moved on tirelessly with his creativity, he met a passer-by called Dave. Unknown to him, Dave had an encounter with a great disappointment. Tunmise greeted Dave as a polite boy he was. In Tunmise’s words, he said:

“Good day sir, How have you been?”

Surprisingly he got a reply:

“Won’t you keep quiet you worthless boy?”

Wow! Should it have gotten to that stage?

This bore a hole and got hard into Tunmise’s soul. Mind you, his skin wasn’t enough to handle such words. He had never heard such a statement before. The whole idea, built image of the past, achievements, and success Tunmise had, all vanished in seconds. He was heartbroken…

Do you think he could get out of it? (I hope you can complete the story I deliberately decided not to finish).

To the passerby, a question was thrown at him in the words of young Tunmise. The furious reply had a long-lasting impact forming a distorted image of a young growing mind. He had gathered his episode of disappointment and frustration, summed them up, and in just seven words threw it at the young boy’s mind. Little did he know that he just cracked a young boy’s mirror.

Little did he know that the words he spoke rubbed off encouragement from the life of a young boy. People are different and so their reception to things varies. Just by his words, discouragement was passed.

Daily, you either pass a message of encouragement or discouragement across whenever the question: “what does encouragement mean to you” is thrown at you.

Your answer, in many ways, will go a long way to affect yourself as well as the life of others around you.

😄 This was actually different from what I thought to share with you. By God’s grace, next week Friday, be sure to have the concluding part of this post where insight will be shared on what encouragement entails and how you can pass the message of encouragement across to others.

Stay safe. You are loved 😍