KNOW THY HISTORY

What is your favorite subject in school? Mine is History. Not so many students like this subject. They abhor history as it entails memorizing dates and personalities. But History is more than that. By studying past events we can understand our present and charter the course of our future. Seen with faith, we can see in our past the hands of God working in our lives. History teaches us about the faithfulness of God in promises He made to us.

It is apt that Mathew and Luke begin their account of Christ's life through a genealogy of Christ. The genealogy of Christ connects Him with the promise God made to Israel, fulfilled in Christ Jesus, and extended to us, the New Israel. Through our history, we experience a faithful God, no matter how unfaithful we have become.   

When we think of Jesus, as the son of God, we expect that he descended from a royal blood; from de Buena familia. The reality is far from it. In the genealogy of Christ, there is a prostitute (Rahab, the harlot of Jericho), a murderer (David), idolaters (Solomon and Amon), and an evil king (Ahaz). In the account of Luke, he traces the ancestry of Jesus to Adam himself, who disobeyed God’s command in the beginning. Christ did not come from a de Buena Familia.

God promised us a Savior. Through generations covenants were made between God and man, that God may fulfill His promise. But many times man broke these covenants. But ours is a faithful God. He drew goodness from the evils which are of man’s doing. Christ was born from a not so perfect ancestry. God remained faithful in His promise. A Savior was born to us. Though we did not come from a de buena familia, through the faithfulness of God, expressed in the birth of Christ, we have become a buenas na familia. 

In our life, Satan wants us to always remember our evil deeds. Satan calls us by our past sins. Sadly, sometimes, we give in to his allurement be haunted by the ghost of the past. The good news is, God wants us to remember His compassion and forgiveness towards us. He calls us by our name. In the end, God’s promise is realized no matter what we do; no matter how evil we have become.  God can bring forth goodness (the sole desire of His heart for us), even in a very evil situation. This is the truth that we can learn from our history; a promise fulfilled yesterday, and a hope realized today, and so will it be in our future, for our God is faithful God. That you can learn in our history as the New Israel.

Are you frustrated or confused about your present?

Look at your past and see how God had been faithful to you;

how He drew straight lines through crooked sticks of your life.

He did in the past, so He does today and even tomorrow.

He is the Unchanging God, the Faithful God in our story.