Royalty, Not Brokenness

By Freddie Williams (excerpt from the book Man-U-Script)
There is an adage that says a child without a father is like a house without a roof. Envision your own home with all of your possessions inside. Now, remove the roof. This seems like a harmless scenario, until a storm comes. In the absence of a roof your possessions are susceptible to damage and destruction. A fatherless child is no different than a roofless house, uncovered and vulnerable to any and all outside forces. Without the stabilizing covering of a father the internal makeup of generations after generation of uncovered youth is being adversely impacted by direct hits from societal malevolence, i.e. storms.

Allow me to speak to you of a man named Mephibosheth(1). Mephibosheth was the son of a prince; royalty was in his lineage, kingship coursed through his veins. At the tender age of 5, Mephibosheth, in the absence of his father, was dropped and subsequently crippled by the person who was entrusted with his care. How many like Mephibosheth have been mishandled, misled, and misplaced by the very person(s) charged with caring for them; and like Mephibosheth, left incapacitated limping through life because of childhood trauma? Through the course of events and by no fault of his own, he who was once destined for the throne was found living as a pauper in the house of a servant in a place called Lodebar.

Literally translated, Lodebar means no communication or no word. But a simple play on words says that because of what occurred in his childhood, he had lowered-the-bar in his adulthood. Anytime we lower the bar, we reduce the standards, decrease the criteria, and adulterate the prerequisites and process. Anytime we operate from a place that is contingent upon watered down standards it is inevitable that lives will be adversely affected. In basketball, the standards call for a basket set at a height of 10 feet. A person executing 360° windmill dunks on a 6 foot basket is completely unimpressive. Why? The lowered bar is far below the inspiring standard.

Black man, you have a rich, robust, royal bloodline. Have you lived up to your potential, your power, and the realization of your purpose? Or, are you, because of your childhood, merely existing rather than living, and surviving as opposed to thriving?

(1) Mephibosheth: 2 Samuel 4:4; 2 Samuel 9