Is Your Word Any Good?

My former pastor asked a question during all of the major services that he conducted as our church. He would ask parents presenting their child for baptism or the individual joining the church or the couple taking their wedding vows, if they gave their word to raise the child well, or serve the church well or love their new spouse well. Inevitably, they would say yes. And then he would follow-up with the real question: Is Your Word Any Good?

That question is increasingly pertinent in my life as I realize how carelessly promises are made and broken. If our word is truly are bond, I feel like most relationships are holding on by a thread.

I work in an industry where words are tossed out without regard for the authenticity. And I've grown so weary of it. I am tired of careless commitments and insincere promises. I have come to a place that I desire to quantify almost anything anyone offers me these day. I just want something that is real. Don't offer false, hollow words or empty flattery, they are but a clanging symbol. Give me something that is true but I fear that most people do most people even know what is true anymore. I wonder what has happened in our society to make us so comfortable with lying, especially when we can rationalize them as we deem them the little ones...promising to call even though you know you won't because you want to appear nice, saying that you will follow-up on something when you have no intention of doing so, all of the hollow words we throw out knowing full well there is no depth behild them. We've come to a place that we are more concerned with seeming than being. We want to seem nice, seem helpful, seem interested, seem kind. We are in the game of controlliong perceptions but, unfortunately under those terms, we all lose.

I long to see a restoration of integrity in our culture where our words hold value and merit, spoken out of truth.