You're listening to Catholic Sprouts, the daily podcast for Catholic kids that strives to plant seeds of faith.

Hey there, Sprouts. Today is Friday, December 21st, 2018. This week on the Catholic Sprouts

podcast, we have been working our way through the Jesse Tree. We started with Ruth, the

great-grandmother of David. We've talked about King David and the beautiful Psalms that he wrote that taught us

how to pray. We also talked about what happened after King David and how many of the kings that

were his descendants were not good kings. And they led the people away from God and into the

worship of idols.

Yesterday we talked about a very sad chapter in history of the Israelite nation.

They have become so far from God.

They had refused to obey his commands for so long that God could no longer protect them.

And the Babylonians came in, conquered them, and took them off to slavery.

Now here is a beautiful thing, my friends.

Even during this period of Babylonian exile, where they were out of the promised land,

where they were abused and slaves once more,

God did not abandon them. Even though they had broken their covenant with him,

God refused to break his covenant with them. The major lesson we need to learn through all of these stories of the Jesse tree

is that God keeps his promises. No matter what, no matter what horrible things we might do,

God keeps his promises. And of course, sending Jesus Christ as our Savior to die on the cross

is the greatest, greatest reminder of that. But today we're going to talk about how even during

these hard years of Babylonian exile, God was still with the nation of Israel. And even during this time, he had a couple of

heroes that demonstrated to Israel how important faithfulness is, even during times of separation

and suffering. The first of these heroes was Daniel. Now maybe you've heard of Daniel and the

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