WOOCS 2.1.5.4

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Life Insurance: Keeping The Dream Alive

I had one of those ‘life-changing experiences’ recently. I was in Nigeria a few months ago, my first time in that interesting country since I got married. I took a big risk leaving my heavily pregnant wife as her due date was fast approaching. Any doctors who knows their onions will tell you that due dates are bonkers; baby could come before or after! I risked missing the birth of my first child! Chao!

I was running financial seminars in Lagos but I thought I will pop into ‘the village’ to say hello to my parents. So off we went on Lagos-Benin Motorway. Half way through the journey, we found ourselves in the middle of an armed robbery attack!

Bullets flew in all directions and I even felt like something hit our car. Needless to say, it scared the daylights out of me! Death stared me in the face and in that moment, my whole life flashed in front of my very eyes; ‘what have I done? So I am never going to see my daughter? (We already knew it’s a girl!) What is she going to look like? Will she have any idea who I was? Would she think I cared about her? Did I leave her, anything, anything at all to tell her what kind of a father I would have, could have been?’ All these questions came up on my mind as my brother who was behind the wheels shouted at me ‘keep your head down! keep your head down!’ I shouted back at him ‘keep your head down too!’

As we moved away from the danger, I searched my mind for the answer to my earlier question: if I had died, will my daughter know I cared about her? I thought of what life would look like for her, if I died. Then I remembered the life insurance (weird, I know.) We had taken one out months after we got married. I knew that my wife would have the financial resources she needed to give our daughter good quality lifestyle, great education (I want her to go to Harvard, you see!) and she would go on to do great things with her life. It occurred to me that my daughter would know what a thoughtful father I would have been after all. She would know, not just from what her mum tells her but in ‘seeing for herself’ what a thoughtful, caring father I would have been!

Off course, I am here today. I am grateful to God we survived that incident and my daughter was born right in front of my very own eyes (and no, I didn’t faint when I first saw her!) but if I had died that day, I know I would have known the true meaning of the words ‘rest in peace’! I know that my dreams for her would not have died with me!

  • Life insurance is such a morbid subject to talk to folks about because it involves contemplating the prospect of death but you know, the truth is having life insurance won’t increase or reduce your chances of death! You are going to die anyway; it is a question of when!
  • Having adequate insurance cover in place is really about taking care of the people in your life! It’s about caring for the husband, the wife, the children and other dependents and making sure that they are well looked after, long after you are gone!

As a Christian, 1 Timothy 5:8 comes to mind: “Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever

We have been taught that this is about providing for your family, supposedly while we are alive to do so! But if you go back and read the entire chapter, especially the verse preceding verse 8 (i.e. verses 3-7), the Bible is actually taking about widows; specifically financial support for widows!

I am no Bible expert but these verses seem to suggest that perhaps someone should have thought about the needs of these widows. I think this passage of the bible is talking about providing for our family, especially for when we may not be around! It is asking you to make provisions for your loved ones, so that  should your time on this side winds up earlier than thought, your loved ones won’t be a burden to others, especially the Church. The essence is that your dreams for them and their own dreams, hope and aspirations would continue to live on.

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