Bible
Study: Isaiah 11, 1 to 10. Ephesians 2, 13
to 22 and Matthew 2, 13 to 23.
Happy Independence Day fellow Nigerians. We thank God Almighty
for bringing us all alive to see yet another birthday of our dear country.
Whether we like it or not, as long as we remain Nigerians, we must celebrate
what we are and what we have. Of course, as a nation, we are not perfect but I
doubt if there is any country in the world where all its citizens are perfectly
happy and satisfied with the state of affairs.
We like to compare ourselves with richer countries in the
developed world but the truth is that there is no country without its own
unique problems. In today’s Gospel passage, Joseph is warned in a dream to take
the child Jesus with its mother and flee from the country of Israel to another
country, Egypt. Why did God send his angel to tell Joseph to run abroad
overnight? Israel as a country like Nigeria had serious problems at that time
thereby making Israel unsafe for the baby Jesus.
And what was the problem? Those in power forgot their purpose
and wanted to kill the child Jesus by all means just to remain in power. Isn’t
that similar to what is happening in our dear nation wherein people are ready
to rig, loot and commit all kinds of atrocities to remain in power? Don’t we
have leaders who are in power simply for their own selfish interests? God knew
Israel was like this, yet he chose that country as the birth place for his son
Jesus Christ. Moreover as at the time Jesus was born, Isreal was not even an
independent nation, it was a Roman colony. As bad as things were, Jesus Christ
carried out his ministry in that same country and the world as a whole today is
a different place because of what Jesus did in Israel two thousand years ago.
What does this teach us? That as bad as Nigeria may appear in
our own eyes now, God can still do something in us, with us and for us such
that a Nigerian can change the entire world. God does not have to make things
perfect in other to work, he knows how to write perfectly on crooked lines. The
prophet Isaiah today speaks of a child to be born from the stump of Jesse, a
perfect child from an imperfect lineage! That same stump of Jesse produced
people like Solomon, it produced kings who misbehaved, kings who worshipped
idols, it produced people who did evil things. God knows how to bring
perfection from imperfect situations and circumstances.
Dear friends, as we celebrate our independence today as a
country, today is also an opportunity to remain ourselves of our dual
citizenship; the fact that we are not just Nigerians but Christians as well.
And as St. Paul would tell us in our second reading today, because Christ died
on the cross, he has broken the dividing wall that separated nations. “You are
no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints
and members of the household of God built upon the foundation of the Apostles
and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.” Our celebration
today should not make us think of ourselves as separate from the world, it
should also remind us that we are united with others as citizens of heaven.
Nigeria as a country is under the patronage of our Mother Mary. Hence,
on a day like this, we celebrate our Mary as the Queen of Nigeria, thanking her
for her intercession so far that has kept this country despite our challenges
and we also call upon her to continue to intercede on our behalf. We pray that
just as she agreed to wake up in the middle of the night to take the child
Jesus with her and make the arduous journey to cross the border and enter
Egypt, she may be willing always to inconvenience herself for the sake our dear
nation that good things may come our way.
Let us
pray:
Lord
Jesus, we thank you for the gift of Nigeria as a nation. Use us mightily even
as we are make the world a better place. Amen.
Be Happy.
Live Positive. Have Faith. It is well with you. God bless you. Happy
Independence day.
Fr. Abu
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing, nice post! Post really provice useful information!
Giaonhan247 chuyên dịch vụ vận chuyển hàng đi mỹ cũng như dịch vụ ship hàng mỹ từ dịch vụ nhận mua hộ hàng mỹ từ trang ebay vn cùng với dịch vụ mua hàng amazon về VN uy tín, giá rẻ.