Promise Keeper

A Reflection on the First Reading for Sunday, August 10th, 2025:
​Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Wisdom
​18.6-9

The night of the deliverance from Egypt was made known beforehand to our ancestors, so that they might rejoice in sure knowledge of the oaths in which they trusted.

The deliverance of the righteous and the destruction of their enemies were expected by your people. For by the same means by which you punished our enemies you called us to yourself and glorified us.

For in secret the holy children of good people offered sacrifices, and with one accord agreed to the divine law, so that the saints would share alike the same things, both blessings and dangers; and already they were singing the praises of the ancestors.

Pause. Pray. Reflect.

In looking at this weekend’s readings, it’s hard to ignore two major themes: God honours our faithfulness, and God is a promise keeper. This reading from the book of Wisdom, which harkens back to the book of Exodus and the liberation of the Israelites from slavery and torment in Egypt, points to both of those themes. 

Reading the Scriptures as a whole, we see God’s love story for His creation. Even in our brokenness, even in our failures, when we cry for His mercy, He supplies it in abundance. What He asks of His people is faithfulness rooted in trust. He asks His people to believe He will come through, just as He did before and will again.

In the events of the book of Exodus, the Israelites — God’s chosen people — are enduring suffering and hardship as slaves to the Egyptians. When God sends Moses to go to Pharaoh to free the Israelites in captivity in Egypt, God declares Himself not just a god or simply God, but emphasizes to Moses that He is the God of their fathers, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God takes on the label of the faithful ones who worshipped Him. This roots Moses in his lost identity as a child of God rather than the son of the Pharaoh and also speaks to the faithfulness of the Israelites who didn’t abandon their faith, the faith they had held for generations under the scourge of slavery in a polytheistic land. They continued to believe in God’s faithfulness to them and worshipped Him in both blessings and dangers. And God came through. He freed and delivered them.

God kept His promise. 

As Christians, this story can feel like a lovely story that happened to someone else, something disconnected from us because we aren’t necessarily genetic descendants of the Chosen People, the sons and daughters of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And yet, these promises belong to us too. Through the saving work of Jesus, we are named as chosen sons and daughters of God. The love story God told through the Scriptures — both Old and New Testament — are for us too.

How many times have each of us experienced God coming through for us? How often has He delivered us from bondage, both inside and out? How often has His provision come to us as a miracle, like manna in the wilderness? How often has He come to answer our pleading prayers?

God keeps His promises. 

And our faithfulness isn’t a performance to lure God into doing our will; it’s a response to His goodness, His mercy, His kindness. It’s an act of gratitude and of trust because I trust that God will always keep His promises. He hasn’t failed me once, even though I have failed Him countless times. Both in blessings and in dangers, I praise God.



​Stéphanie Potter

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