NATIVITY AND THE FAITHFULNESS OF GOD:

A LESSON FOR ALL

After the fall of man, God out of His eternal mercy decided to redeem man form his state of sin. This decision of His which God wants man to be very much aware of made Him send the prophets to tell man that salvation shall come to him and then prepare man for the coming of the saviour. All the Prophets from the period of the patriarchs, to Moses, down to John the Baptists, spoke about the coming of the Saviour.

At every point in time when this message was given, the people were filled with high hopes of seeing the saviour. Finally, the saviour came into the world and He was born in Bethlehem in Judea in the days of Herod king of Judea. Thus, God has revealed himself fully by sending his own son, in whom he has established his covenant forever. (cf CCC no.73)

The Nativity of the Lord in the New Testament has added to the evidence in the Old Testament that God is ever faithful to His promises. His faithfulness was shown to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and many other instances in the Bible show that God is ever faithful.

There is a veritable lesson which can be drawn from the above. The lesson is that just as God is faithful, we must also learn to be faithful like Him .This faithfulness is demanded of us in our daily livings especially with the duties and things entrusted to us. We all have different assignments entrusted to us; we are called to be faithful in them by being dedicated to them. This is because the one who assigned us those duties has high hopes and as such a disappointment will bring the hopes down.

On another hand and most importantly, we all made baptismal promises to God and renew them annually, how faithful have we been in that regard? How far have we made sincere efforts to remain ever faithful to those promises we made to God? How committed are we in keeping with the promises we made that glorious day to reject Satan, his works and deceits? Unfortunately, while God has remained ever faithful to us, we have through our bad actions and inconsistencies remained unfaithful to Him.

We are hereby called to learn from God the virtue of faithfulness. In life we must try to keep to the promise we make either with our fellow human beings or with God. To make a promise is to be committed and commitment presupposes faithfulness. If we are not faithful, then we are not committed. He who is not faithful is not worthy of any responsibility. Therefore we must do our best to be faithful in all we do. And more importantly, we must be faithful to God by obeying His commandment which we also promise to keep. Ecclesiastes chapter 5: 4 &5 warns us in this regard. Shall we therefore not be faithful like God?

Nwanyanwu Chris