The destiny of each one of us, of everyone born of a woman, is to do the will of God on earth and return to Him in heaven after death. And the will of God for us is that we should know Him as God, love Him as God and Serve Him as God. This is God’s mandate for man, His religion for us and the reason why we are human in our being. So, we are on earth on an assignment for God our Creator, and at the end of our days on earth, we shall return to Him for the promised reward if we have been faithful. This is our common destiny, except we chose to derail it by our opposition to the will of our Creator through disobedience, and thereby deny ourselves an eternity with God. God is so good that, despite being the Almighty, He does not impose His will on us, but rather chose to honor us with the respect or privilege of a free will to choose to love and honor Him as God in obedience and not out of compulsion. This is our Human Right, the Grundnorm of our humanity, the only freedom we really have and that matters, the choice that is perpetually before us; freedom to choose to live or to die. 

God has graciously given us life and the freedom to choose to love and honor Him or to choose not to love and honor Him. And for me, this is the true definition of Human Right; the freedom given to man by God to choose to live in love as a product of Love or to choose to live otherwise, and this is the defining factor of who is with God. This is so because to love and to obey makes us children of God, while disobedience separates us from God to our ruin and eternal damnation. And bear in mind that our choices, the use or abuse of our freedom defines our eternity, for God has no needs that we can supply. We labor on earth for ourselves and not as a favor or benefit to God as our obedience and affection add nothing to the glory of God. In reality, we are the beneficiary of our faithfulness or unfaithfulness, and this is why Apostle James said in his Letter that if anyone say he is wise, let him prove it by his good life and good deeds, and by this, he meant faith and charity.

God created the earth for man as a father would provide toys for his children. But this gift of life and creation is with a mandate that we oversee same in love and in honor of Him as God. So, life remains a gift so long as we make good use of it for supernatural purpose, else it would have been better we were not given it. It is like a father telling his children to make good use of the beautiful and expensive house he has built for them with the sweat of his brow else they will have him to contend with. So, life and creation are gifts; physical attractions and enticements for our happiness and to help us acknowledge the awesome presence of our father God on earth, and for this, He desire and demand our obedience. Furthermore, God made all the elements of creation subject to man, and so it was until the sin of Adam. And though the earth has now become our Altar of Reparation on account of the Sin and our sins, God continue to reveal Himself to us in the beauty and wonders of creation, giving us hope and a taste of what heaven has in store for the faithful. And being human, nobody can deny knowledge of God and of His holy expectations for we have the image of God in us. We may not know Him in His perfections, but we know that there is God who deserves our love and affection.

Our limited knowledge of who God is and of His holy expectations of us is a consequence of the sin of Adam and our own sins. At creation and before the sin, Adam enjoyed the benefit of the holy presence of God through the grace of filial relationship between him and his Creator God and the pure image of God in him. Adam and his wife Eve were overwhelmed with Sanctifying Grace, the glory and holy presence of God as they lived in God and enjoyed the blessedness of being in God. They were in paradise on earth, in the physical presence of God in the Garden of Eden; heaven on earth. But when they sinned, they lost the Sanctifying Grace of God and they became naked, and hid from God as if they could. And on account of the sin, Creation immediately reacted and revolted against the man and the woman, and earth became an exile; a cursed land devoid of the sanctifying presence of God. Robbed of the grace and glory of God by their sin, Adam and Eve became naked, for unlike all the animals whose skin, hair and feather form their covering, grace and glory was the supernatural clothing of the first man and woman.

As sin robbed them of their heavenly clothing and they became naked before all the elements of creation, they ran and hide in shame. And as further punishment, they were expelled from the Garden of God on earth to wander about the earth in expiation and in confusion, but with a promise of salvation. We fell from grace to grass and have been falling since then, despite the coming of Jesus the Christ, the Promised Messiah. We are now a little better than the animals while many of us have become beasts, and like drunken sailors, we now wander back and forward in the ocean of life, sometimes in circles, bemused and bewildered because we have lost our compass; our bearing as children of God. We have become destitute as the poison of sin has robbed us of our birth right, leaving us weak, thirsty and hungry, and above all, leaving us vulnerable to the temptations and snares of the cursed enemy of God and man, Lucifer. This is so because we have stubbornly refused to take advantage of the merits of the Cross of Calvary and reconcile with our Creator and father God for our good.

But sometimes, and in a time of grace as if in a sober moment, we catch a glimpse of the goodness and mercy of God upon us, and we experience some peace and tranquility. But we are not always able to maintain this supernatural filial relationship with our Father because sin has injured our spirit, and like the prodigal son, we have lost our confidence and grace as children of God. That instead of looking up to our father God who is in heaven with pride and hope for everything, we are weighed down with the shame and burden of our sins and in our confusion, we struggle and fight one another for the miserable things of the earth, committing more sins and atrocities, running farther away from the loving embrace of our Father and still attempting to hide from Him; the fools that we are. This is why we needed to be baptized; to be born again, to clean our soul of the foul smell and stains of Lucifer and rise from the fallen state of humanity to become once again children of God.

The Sacrament of Baptism washes away the consequences of the Original sin and our Actual sins, making us, once again children of God and members of His family on earth; the Church. Baptism is one of the seven Sacraments, gifts of Jesus the Christ to mankind for our sanctification and salvation. It is the first necessary step to help us reconcile with our Father through the merits of the sacrifice of Jesus, the new Adam. For by reason of the consequences of the sin of our first parents and our own sins, we now need the help of God; grace, to be able to do the will of God on earth. Instead of being like plants planted by the river, we are now like plants dying of thirst and will die if not rescued as our spirits have been injured and robbed of  Sanctifying Grace by our enemy, Lucifer. This grace, obtainable through the merits of Jesus the Christ is our refuge, our strength and defense; it leaves a mark on our soul for the sanctification of the image of God in us as we journey through earth to make heaven. 

The image of God in each and every one of us is the gift of God Himself. It is the breath of the life in us and the reason we are human beings and different from the animals. This image of God in us is our soul, and for each soul, God provided a body, initially eternal but now with a limited life span on account of the sin of Adam. The body is of earth, made of sand, and will die and return to dust on account of the sin, but the soul, being of God is immortal. When the body expires, it releases the soul which returns to its Creator to be judged as worthy or unworthy of the holy presence of God in accordance with the choices made while on earth. Thus, the body is nothing more than the dwelling of a soul, and our eternal destiny is entirely in our hands. We are either with God, on account of our obedience to the will of God, or without God, on account of our disobedience. So, though it is the wish of the good God that every soul should return to Him after his or her sojourn on earth, it is man that can change his destiny from this original plan of God by his obedience or disobedience. 

Know that we have only one assignment on earth; to love and live in love. To love is the religion of God for man and His will for mankind; man was created to love God above everything and his neighbor as himself and nothing else. Our gender, status, occupation, color and creed is of no consequence before God except that they are everyday opportunities for us to practice our divine assignment of love for God and neighbor. This divine will of God for man is neither debatable nor contestable, you either accept and obey for your good, or reject and disobey at your peril. And this is why the word of God says in Psalm 25 that the Lord is the friend of those who obey Him and He affirms His covenant with them forever. This is the truth and not a lie, and this is why at death, the scale of the judgment of God for man has only one weight; the volume of our love for God and neighbor. Every other achievement of man, no matter its name and consequence is meaningless and of no value except it is rooted in love for God and neighbor as proof of our obedience to the will of our father God who gave us life that we may live loving Him.

The commandments of love for God and neighbor are so bound up together, that you cannot observe or transgress one without observing or transgressing the other. Anyone who observes these principal commandments of God observes all the others, and such a person is faithful to God and his neighbor in all things. Such a person loves God and the creatures of God, he is Christ like; a Christian, who sees God in everything, and with humble patience, endures every labor and distraction from his neighbor for the glory of God and for the salvation of self and neighbor. A soul in obedience is like a baby in the arms of the mother, happy and blissful, unaware and unperturbed with the snares around him. This is the promise of God and such is the status, the dignity and the destiny of a soul in love. And except for those already dead even though still alive, nobody can say he does not know what God expects from him or her in every situation. It is our willingness or unwillingness to do the will of God that question our sanity and define our humanity.

The greatest hindrance to our doing the will of God is the weakness of self love. This is pride at work, and it is one of the seven deadly sins. It is the doorway to other horrible sins, and unfortunately, it has become the clothing of many of us. We bask in pride to our ruin, and same has eaten so deep into our human fabric that it is now in charge and in total control of who we are. Our comfort and personal satisfaction are now above and held in higher consideration than our obligations to God and neighbor, and for this we suffer and will continue to suffer as we now live purely for the flesh, living the lie that God does not matter. We are Christians in name but in reality and frightfully, God have become a non issue to many of us. We are dead souls in idolatrous bodies, human in nature but lesser than beasts in reality; enemy to self, wicked to neighbor and affront to God. And having been poisoned by the satanic bug of pride, we are now fully in alliance with the evil one as we do anything and everything for our selfish self-satisfaction. We live for self, the flesh and the world; dead to God and dead to self.

Whereas it is true that God has put man in charge of creation with authority to oversee and dominate the earth, this authority is subject to our willingness to respect and obey the precepts of God for our peace and fulfillment. This is so because the earth is not our own, we all belong to God. He is our Source and as such, we cannot find happiness outside of Him except we want to lie. This is why like Adam and Eve who could not find peace and happiness in their disobedience, we too cannot find peace and fulfillment in our disobedience or from any created thing except from God and through our obedience to His will. This is so because, being human and the perfect creatures of God, (before our self defilement), God has placed us higher and above all other created things. And it is natural that we can only find peace and fulfillment in a being outside us and higher than us, and no other exists but God alone. Do you not know that everything in creation is inferior to man and that God alone is superior to man? This is why, despite all our scientific and technological developments, we are still running around in circles in search of peace as our achievements are majorly outside God instead of being in God. 

We may pretend to believe or mislead others to believe that we can without God, but we know we cannot. All our efforts to negate the influence and presence of God in our humanity will remain miserable futile efforts that will continue to earn mankind nothing but sorrow and misery. And so long as man refuses obedience to the will of God his father, so also nature will refuse to honor man and on the instead continue to unleash its anger upon us in response to our disobedience to the Author of life. Nature, as co-creatures of God is warning us and has been warning us day and night to reconcile with our Creator and God, to honor and obey the Source of life and all that exist, but in our wickedness we have refused, and on the instead, we pretend to misinterpret nature’s Global Warnings to be Global Warming, the liars that we are. Know that obedience to God is our ticket and passport to a life of peace and fulfillment here on earth and hereafter, for no matter the quantum of love and affection a father has for his child, it is implicitly expected of the child to honor and obey his father for an unbroken enjoyment of his father’s affection.

Thus, though the whole of creation is for our amusement and enjoyment, provided for us by a loving Father who forever beforehand provides for the needs of his children, we are called to put God first in everything so that we may enjoy His many benefits and blessings, else we will continue to run around in circles until we pass out or we make of earth a hell. We must always bear in mind that our being alive is a grace, and most importantly, that life is not an end in itself but a means to an end. We are alive and on planet earth at the pleasure of God and for a purpose, w e are alive and on earth to do the will of God on earth individually and collectively. We are on earth to conquer heaven with our choices, and only one road leads to heaven; obedience. The strength for this journey is derivable from the benefits of our obedience to the Commandment of love for God and neighbor, and this is why it is safe to say that our destiny is in our hands. And as a hired hand or steward cannot get reward or satisfaction from his job if he neglects to do same properly, so also we should not expect any reward but frustration, pain and sorrow when we refuse to do the will of God in our everyday activities, no matter how insignificant or important it may be, for unless we walk with the Lord, we labor in vain.

Oh, you protest that you are not a steward but a child of God, and I dare to ask, how faithful you have been in doing the will of your father God who has done so much for you. Have you been living in love for Him as God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself? This and this alone is the determining factor, and so I ask again, how faithful are you? It matters not who or what you were yesterday, today is a good day, another opportunity to make amend, to reconcile your soul; the queen of your heart with her Creator God, so that you may have peace which the world cannot take from you. So, live, no longer for yourself but for Him who for your sake was crucified, who asks for nothing but love, who, like a beggar with a cup in his hands begs for your love. And I also beg of you, on behalf of the Christ and for the sake of the Lamb that was slain, be reconciled to God through your love and obedience for you were born to do His will.

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