The wheels of God’s justice.

It was the latter half of 2016, and I was supposed to be in the UK starting my first semester of post graduate studies. Well, what am I doing in Bahrain then? Trust me I was asking the same question back then yet choosing to trust that God had my back.

I had received conditional offers from 3 universities in the UK to pursue my post graduate studies in construction project management during the final year of my civil engineering studies (2015-2016). I was excited and googled everyday to understand the lifestyle, weather, cost of living, etc in these cities in the UK. I was prepping myself for the transition I had to undergo. It was time for my final semester (8th semester) exams. One fine day, as I was studying for one of my final semester exams, the results of our 7th semester was published. I went online to see how well I did. My heart skipped a beat as I read that I had failed a subject! I had never failed a subject until that point in my life and so I took a deep breath to soak the reality in. What this meant was that I could no longer pursue my masters immediately after I graduate as the offer was conditional upon the candidate passing in every subject. I had to re-take the 7th semester subject. Broke the news to my parents and sister. They were sad as I was. I made a choice to remain calm and focus on my forthcoming exams and deal with this later.

Now you know why I am in Bahrain even though I had graduated civil engineering in the middle of 2016. I came to Bahrain to work as a Junior Site Engineer in pappa’s firm while I was waiting for my 7th semester re-evaluation results. I had given the subject I failed in 7th semester for re-evaluation. I had also re-sat the exam for that subject. My mother could clearly see the despair in my face in those days. Those 4 months in Bahrain was hard. I needed answers, I was praying to God asking where I went wrong. Is there something You wanted me to correct, God? What is it?

One day, this heavy thought came upon my heart that I needed to confess something to my parents. In my 6th semester of engineering, I had decided to re-sit for an exam to improve my grades. I told my parents that I was studying well when in fact I was too complacent with the grade I had and lazy to study. On the day of exam, I left home telling them I was attending the exam when in reality I had no intention to. I ended up going to the movies to kill time and came back home and told them that the exam was easy.

I was convinced that God wanted me to be honest with my parents even though it was something that happened almost couple years ago at that point in time. And man! It was not easy! I mustered all my courage and decided to open up to my mother one day. I told her what had happened, and we both broke down. My mum told my dad that evening what I said, and I thanked God that I could get it off my chest. And the very next day, a wonderful thing happened! My re-evaluation results came online, and I had passed! Do you know what this means? Passing in re-evaluation meant that I was never supposed to fail that subject in the first place. It was God all the while telling me, Akhil you needed to take a pause and come clean before you can move on to the next phase of your life. And today, I live in Melbourne, blessed with a job that I got once I completed my post graduate degree. Akhil, how did you end up in Melbourne? Well, that is a story for another time!

The wheels of God’s justice grind slowly but perfectly. But wasn’t God supposed to forgive me as He loves me unconditionally? Well, I believe that had He forgiven me without taking me through this, I would have blindly made the wrong choice when presented with similar scenarios again. But what I had gone through has transformed me to know His will and obey it, to do what Jesus would have done. In the end as believers aren’t we all yearning to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ?