Remember The Promises You Make To God

One thing you can give and still keep is your word.

“The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.” Proverbs 11:3

Remember “pinky promises?” You know when you and your BFF decided to share a secret just between each other. Forever! Or at least until you made a new best friend forever.

As a manly man kind of boy I made several “pinky promises.” Except my pinky promises involved a good bunch of spit.

One day my BFF and I were out hunting birds with our BB guns. (Yeah, no. We never could shoot one.) We ran across an old beat-up truck in the middle of his next door neighbor’s field. There were a bunch of old, really heavy tin, beer cans in the back end of the truck so we decided to have some target practice.

Now just to be fair, today’s BB guns aren’t anything like the ones of old. When you shot the BB sometimes it flew left. Sometimes right. And sometimes it dropped about 2 feet in front of the gun.

So we lined up the cans on the back tailgate, took aim, and launched volley after volley at the cans. After a while, we decided to get closer. (The wind was blowing!) So we did and started again. I finally hit a can and that just gave more fervor to the competition.

After it was all done we had knocked down all the cans. Triumph! Then we noticed the back glass of the truck. When we saw it we immediately went into stealth mode. After crawling back to the safety of the trees we sat in solemn silence for a while and one of us had the idea that no one could ever find out that it was us. So we made each other a promise. Then we spit in our palms and shook hands.

I don’t know why. Maybe we saw it on the Lone Ranger show or something. But something about spitting in our palms and shaking hands seemed to make it more concrete. Like nothing would ever drive us apart, no matter how much torture or coercion, we would never betray our promise. My buddy broke first. We spent two days cleaning out his neighbor’s chicken coop (which is a whole other story in and of itself.) But during the whole time I kept saying, “But you promised! We even spit shook on it!”

That wasn’t the only time our BB guns led to a spit handshake. Sometimes the promises lasted. Sometimes not so long. But every time we made one, it seemed like it would last forever and ever.

Sometimes we make “pinky promises” or “spit handshakes” with God. We promise to be good or to stop doing what we’re doing. Maybe we promise to pray more, go to church more, help more. Until next time when we make the same promises again.

Today is not a challenge to be more faithful in your promises. Let us pray. O God from whom every gift derives, we worship you this day. You are an awesome God, greater than our comprehension or our imagination. You are beyond any word we could ever use to describe you. And yet, through Jesus, we know the intimacy of your vast Love. We have come to you in thanksgiving and praise, to know that you are God, and to place our lives anew into your perspective. Enlarge our vision with your Word. Instill in us, again, your hope in place of our despair, your peace where our hatred threatens, your joy amidst our depression, and your love overwhelming our apathy. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.