Growing up in the 1930's, my Mom (and her sister and their mother) lived on her Big Momma and Little Papa's farm in East Texas. It was a hard time called the Great Depression. It was Grapes of Wrath time in the history of the world, not just America. Getting a nickel to buy a bag of penny candy at the store in town was a HUGE deal and occurred infrequently. One of Mom's favorite Christmas presents was getting an orange in her stocking.
It was a time when people meant what they said, and said what they meant. People kept their word if they made a promise. Most people, anyway. So, you can understand my Mom's excitement when one of her Uncles promised to pick her, her sister and other younger cousins, up on Saturday to go into town for the day. Mom would get up at the crack of dawn, get dressed up as best she could and even put on her shoes (normally saved for Winter, as she mostly went barefoot the rest of the time)...and wait.
She'd wait on the front porch where she had the best vantage point to watch the two lane dirt road rambling past her Big Momma's farm.
She's watch the sun come up, and eventually go down.
She'd wait all day.
"He said he would take us in to town today!" She'd protest when family would try to coax her away from the porch. Heartbroken, she'd cry herself to sleep. Her Uncle didn't come that day, nor the next time he promised to come and get her. Mom was 6 or 7 at the time, so she had childlike trust in her Uncle's broken promises until one time her Big Momma explained to her that her Uncle didn't mean what he said. He was actually being quite cruel and hadn't meant to be taken seriously. He was a big kidder. A cad. A guy who didn't mean what he said. A knot wells up in my throat and angry tears pool in my eyes when I think about the cruel mistreatment my Mom suffered as a small, trusting child. I believe events like this helped lay a foundation of mistrust for men my mom carried with her throughout her life.
How good are you at following through on your promises?
Can your yes be trusted and your no believed?
We're continuing in Psalm 15 today.
| The Code: Painful Promises Posted: 14 Aug 2010 01:00 AM PDT ". . . who keeps his oath even when it hurts . . ." (Psalm 15:4) We're getting back to where we started this week. Today's piece of the code for a man or woman who would be welcome in God's house is often included in the codes of cowboys and TV mob guys and superheroes. "A man's word is his bond." "If I said it, I'll do it." In an action movie, sometimes the hero even dies keeping a hard promise.
Keeping your word still matters in our culture. And in David's world, an oath was a huge deal. Taking an oath was a way of making a contract, a promise beyond just agreeing to do something. God's Law made it a sin to willfully break even a thoughtless oath. (See Leviticus 5:4) Jesus told people not to take oaths. Just have so much integrity that your "yes" and "no" stand on their own. (Matthew 5:37)
Sometimes keeping our word costs a lot more than we thought it would. Sometimes we have less time or money than we hoped when it's time to pay up on a promise. David and Jesus say that should be our problem. Don't promise easy. And be willing to suffer the pain of keeping those promises.
Think: How often do you say you'll do something -- and then not do it? Why do you think that's so common in our culture? What can you do about it?
Pray: Ask God to help you to become known as a person who does what you say you'll do. Ask Him to help you to be willing to suffer for that character quality.
Do: If you want to get an idea for how good you are at keeping your word, try this. Ask a couple of close friends or family members to rate you on a scale between 1 and 10 for this question: When you say you're going to do something, how confident are they that you'll actually do it?  |
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