The Nearest Call Is The Greatest Call

I was at the bank yesterday and while I was filling out some forms, I heard a loud cry from someone behind me. It startled me, so I stopped what I was doing to see what was happening. No, I’m normally not this curious but because I was in an enclosed space, I needed to know if I had to run away or if I was safe. When I turned around, I realized I wasn’t the only one having that kind of thought because I saw everyone staying very alert.

Security asked the woman to go outside, but she didn’t even bother to look at him. He then used force to get her to leave the bank. When I was leaving, I saw that a group of people had gathered around her trying to calm her down.

Later, I found out that she was at the bank for a loan. A huge sum of money. She said she needed it to keep her business and family running. She also needed some to pay her kids’s school fees because they’ve been sacked from school for more than a month.

While she was at the bank, she got a message from her friend that had a link. And after clicking the link, she saw that her husband had gone to donate a huge amount of money on TV, and he was being praised. Knowing that her husband claimed to be unemployed and had no money, she felt a sharp pain in her heart which caused her scream at the bank.

She said her husband has been broke for so long and always says he has no money. She’s been the one to hold the family together for so long but seeing that he was the same person on TV being praised for that donation made her go crazy.

I kept thinking to myself, I thought charity begins at home. I thought what should always come first was family. I thought before you even thinking of doing good to people, your family should be okay. But here is the case where your family is going through a lot. In fact, your kids have been home for more than a month but you still chose to go on TV to do big man things?

I even started to think if he lied about not having money. I began thinking about where he got that amount of money from in the first place. If he had it all this while and just decided to hide it from this wife, then I don’t even know. Well, the best I could do was to just keep thinking because I only heard from just one side and felt it wasn’t right to conclude.

Either way, I believe the message I’m trying to send to us all is that charity truly should begin at home. Your first responsibility as a person, whether financially, physically, or emotionally, should be to your family. Those are the ones you need to show your first responsibility to before you even think of other people outside your home. It’s never okay to cloth outsiders when your household is naked, or feed outsiders when your own people at home are hungry. It’s never worth it.