The Seventh Day of Christmas

Faithfulness is a gift of the Spirit. It is a gift that needs to be cultivated. Our society is often slave to the feeling of the moment. Faithfulness calls us to transcend those feelings and remain committed to someone or something. For Christians the challenge is to be faithful to God even when we are challenged by all the competing good things of our world. Years ago, someone reflected on the Sacrament of Baptism and suggested that the parents ought to be challenged to recognize that the vow to bring the child up in the church would be particularly difficult. “Do you promise,” the author asked, “to bring your surly teenager to church? Do you promise to set aside all those other activities and make participating in the Body of Christ a priority above all others?”
Faithfulness is a gift – a gift to be used so that we can bear good fruit in God’s world. The more we strive to know God, to be faithful in our seeking, the more that God’s values and God’s ways will be manifest in how it is we live.