Consistency – Sunday, January 26, 1986
Once this was a world where a deal could be closed by a handshake. Integrity meant being as good as your word. If one said the bill would arrive tomorrow, he’d walk if he had to, to deliver it. A promise was made to be kept.
Yet, somehow over the years we’ve slipped away from that ideal we’ve become a litigious society where contracts are made and broken, promises are fragile and loopholes plentiful. We mean to do what we said we would, but there are mitigating circumstances. Alibis jump to our lips with little bidding. “If only I’d had more time,” we say. “If only this hadn’t come up,” “I meant to do it, but it just didn’t work out.” However good we can make them sound; excuses erode something vital in us.
We’ve lost something when we celebrate the smart, cool operator who learns how to turn every situation to his own advantage. We’re injured by unconsciously accepting the societal norm that we don’t have to be as good as our word.
In the movie, A Man for All Seasons, Thomas Moore is placed on trial by King Henry VIII, found guilty, and sentenced to death because he would not renounce his church. Before his death, a beloved daughter comes to him and pleads that he just say he is not a believer. That would not change his heart, she claims.
Moore responds by holding his two hands together in a cup, telling her that, if his soul were in those hands, telling the lie would be like spreading the fingers apart. It may be just a little, but it would be enough for his soul to drain away.
So, it is for us. As parents, friends, business partners, do we mean what we say? Will
we do what we claim? Many of the opportunities to slide away from our word seem small—practically inconsequential: but, if we cannot have integrity in the small things, how can we in the large?
When life has been hard on us, we go to the Lord because we can count on Him. His consistency is the one thing in this inconstant world upon which we can absolutely trust.
It is no coincidence that He makes and keeps promises. In creating covenants. He expects us to do the same.
January 26, 1986
Broadcast Number 2,945