2020: The Year God Proves That “The Way Of Man Is Not In Himself”

“According to Jeremiah 10 verse 23, the word of God says, “O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps”. The foregoing scripture has literarily been on the lips of humanity as a saying that is readily quoted mostly to serve as an encouragement in the midst of vicissitude of life or when opportunities are missed. There is no denying the fact that we all have at one time or the other heard about this scripture in our lives and might have not given it a deep thought at certain point in time, and tend to ponder over it.

Against the foregoing backdrop, it is not erroneous in this context to say that the year, 2020, even if it is still running on the calendar, is disappointing from any angle from Man’s perspective. For instance, for more than a decade today, Nigerian leaders have been visualizing 2020 as the year that will catapult the country into the league of the first global 20 economies.

It is expedient at this juncture to sound it loud and clear that those that are not in the Christendom see vision as the ability to see the future and tell people how a given time in the future will look like. It is therefore not surprising that the government sees the much talked about Vision 2020 as a veritable instrumentality of seeing Nigeria become one of the topmost 20 economies in the world by the year 2020.

However, to those in the ecclesiastical world, vision is the experience in the life of a person, whereby a special revelation from God was received. The revelation from God has two purposes. The Bible is replete with stories on how visions were given for immediate direction on the one hand, and on the other hand, how visions were given to develop the kingdom of God by revealing the moral and spiritual deficiencies of the people of God in light of God's requirements for maintaining a proper relationship with Him. The vision of prophets such as Isaiah, Amos, Hosea, Micah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and John are exemplars of this aspect of revelation.

Now to the government’s kind of vision, it is obvious that year 2020 that was rightly or wrongly believed to be the year of Eldorado has few weeks left to expire, expectedly on December 31 by midnight. Disappointedly, rather than experiencing the proverbial milk and honey our leaders assured would be inherent in year 2020, and being the year Nigeria would be ranked as one of the 20 topmost countries in the world, in terms of economic strength, the opposite unarguably seems to be the case.

It is expedient to recall that when the Federal Government came up with its Vision 2020 that it set dates for attaining the dream. It also raised some organs to work towards making the dream a reality.

It is not an exaggeration to bemoan in this context that despite the implementation of the project that not few Nigerians have been ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed and ill-educated even if the vision had always remained at the center stage of discussion for Nigerian leaders. Notwithstanding that many Nigerians who live in the rural areas face massive underdevelopment, the importance of vision 2020 before now was never been ignored by the government.

Be that as it may, not few Nigerians have been of the view that the philosophy behind vision 2020 was ambitious in the face of poverty that has been the basic malady of Nigeria. In their unanimous view, poverty has remained a misery-go-round, particularly in the slum of the country’s economy. This is even as the vision was seen against the backdrop of the antecedents of policy reversals, somersaults and failures in the country. Analyzed from the foregoing perspective, not few Nigerians waved the vision aside, and saw it as a vision that would not be realized.

Without any scintilla of hyperbole, the year 2020 has given many Nigerians the revelation that “The way of a man is not in himself”, and is still going on giving new revelations on a day to day basis. If there is word that anyone cannot deny that the Lord has taught Nigerians in the year 2020, it is the one God spoke about in Isaiah chapter 14 verse 27 that says, “For the Lord of hosts has purposed, and who will annul it? His hand is stretched out, and who will turn it back?”

With the plans which the government at each political dispensation, over the years, thought would come into manifestations in year 2020, no one ever dreamt that a viral infection that started from one of the tiny wet markets in Wuhan, China, will turn into a pandemic for the most part of the year, and has seemingly led to the nation’s economy being brought to a standstill. As if that was not enough for Nigeria, the EndSARS debacle added to it.

But then, it did happen and at the beginning, many thought that this will not be a bigger threat to them but it turned out that the proposal called Vision 2020 was not acceptable to God. Others had predicted the course of the virus and here too their expertise had no consensus to that of the almighty. Today the pandemic continues its growth and the country, no doubt, is running behind solution as there is no vaccine yet to mitigate the challenge. Analyzed from the foregoing perspective, to say that the devil has taken control as all proposals made by the government on Vision 2020 are not getting any positive response from the Gods cannot be said to be erroneous.

On an individual level, we all had our plans to move ahead in life and many had arranged or finalized most of the plans to be put into action during this year. There is no doubt in my mind that none of us had expected that the year, 2020, will come with full load of Corona virus and EndSARS in such a dramatic manner and thereby putting all of us inside the four walls of our homes without having enough time and finances to realize plans targeted for the year.

For the Corona virus, those who dared to challenge it ended up inside the four walls of their homes as they infected by the virus. Family vacations, Marriages, and even death and funerals have become accustomed to the ways of the Virus and contrary to what many of us expected in the year.

In the end, there is no doubt that we can have unlimited power to our imaginations and can plan and propose whatever we wish for, but the final call on that is not entirely in our hands and this is where the reality of a higher power comes into the picture. Many of us may have a different approach to the above but look around and all one can see the helplessness of billions of people, whether rich or poor, healthy or sick trying to come into terms with the reality of today. But then remember God will never let go of his favorite creations and we should not forget that he has a way of reminding us that he does exist and that He is the one that decides the outcome of the proposals made by anyone of us. After all, the word of God in Jeremiah 10 verse 23 says “O Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself; it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps”.