Promises
“Don’t ever promise more than you can deliver, but always deliver more than you promise.” ~ Lou Holtz
The symbol for today is a rainbow. That symbol represents a promise made by God to Noah that He would never again destroy the world by a flood. He made a promise that He could deliver and God delivered even more because He has promised eternal life to replace the death that we incurred in the fall.
We are a people who are not very good when it comes to promises. Oh, don’t get me wrong. We make promises to many people practically every day. We even make promises to God quite often. However, our promises tend to end up broken. We do not have the strength or intent to deliver. We merely make promises that we often know we will never keep often to make others happy with us.
We even joke about it. I have heard more jokes about broken New Year’s resolutions than I can possibly remember. When someone states that they have made a resolution at the New Year, most people snicker and take imaginary bets on how long the resolution will last.
It appears that we do not believe in ourselves. We believe, instead, in our frailty, our brokenness, and our sinfulness.
Promises are important. Many interchanges with children often end with a child looking at us rather innocently and asking, “Promise?” When we make a promise to them, they believe that it will be done as we have said. When we break our promises, we teach children to distrust others and that is a horrible disservice to them.
We all know how we have felt when people have broken promises to us. And, for the most part, we have become jaded when people make promises, often writing them off and never expecting them to be fulfilled. That is why it is often hard to hear about the promises of God. We tend to think of Him in terms of our human relationships.
God’s Word, however, is to be trusted completely. God has never made a promise that He broke. He has always fulfilled them and that gives us the confidence to believe that He will always fulfill His promises.
Trust in God this day. You will not be disappointed.
FAITH ACTION: If you have gone back on promises to others, do what you can to make amends.