Keeping Promises

Do you keep promises?  How important is it to you: to do what you say that you are going to do? 0r are you like Maryanne*?  When you meet Maryanne, she is the type of person that you might instantly like. Beautiful, funny, warm and intelligent.  She leads with her heart. She expresses vulnerability and does not leave you alone if you do the same.  I met her at church one Sunday when she came over to talk to two people that I was speaking with.  After I was introduced to Maryanne, she joined our conversation about the Pastors' sermon.

She impressed me as she seemed to take everything the Pastor said to heart.  She even lead the discussion in a deep and meaningful direction. We connected and started a friendship.  I looked forward to the times that we spent together.  Her sweet, humorous text messages were always a lift in my day.  As I got to know her better, it became clear that there were some glaring deficits in her Christian understanding.

It seemed that she viewed her Sunday Worship Service as entertainment. It was more about having good times or calming down her frayed nerves. Don't get me wrong, God promises us, peace that surpasses all understanding. Furthermore, it is great to hear someone would rather listen to a Pastor preach a sermon than stay home and binge watch Game of Thrones or something.  Church is definitely better entertainment.

Still, there was signs that serving self lay at the heart of her new found relationship with the Lord.  I hoped that I could encourage her by being a good role-model of Christian living.  I liked to share stories of challenges that I faced and how I tried to honor Jesus in the choices that I made.  I also shared about upcoming church events that I was excited about or chose to participate in.

Once such event, concerned an upcoming Church luncheon.  The Annual Womens's Fellowship Luncheon* was a much anticipated event where women gathered to share struggles, victories, prayer and visions for the future.  Ordinarily Jen* handled cooking and clean-up for this event. However, due to complications in her pregnancy, her doctor had put her on complete bed rest.

The head of the Women's Ministry called me since I had assisted Jen in the past.  She wondered if I could fill in. The one problem was that the usual people who assisted at this event were not available this year.  I would be pretty much on my own.

Undeterred, I felt happy to accept this challenge.  To my surprise when I mentioned it to Maryanne, she enthusiastically offered to help me. She chimed in with, " we'll have a ball," and this will be great girlfriend time."  I thought it would be a nice bonding experience too, but my emphasis had to be more of a practically one.

After all, come that Saturday afternoon, there would be fifty hungry mouths to feed!  I told Maryanne my plan for tackling the event.  The Wednesday before the luncheon, I would take two hours to shop for all the food, bring the groceries to church. Then, wash the dishes I would need and complete any chores that needed to be done before the cooking began.

Thursday and Friday I would cook two hours each day.  This way the food would simply need to be heated up Saturday and served.  After sharing an overview of the job ahead with Maryanne, I asked her where she thought that she would like to contribute. Her immediate response was she would spend some time cooking with me on Thursday & help serve on Saturday. In a loving affirmation she told me, that "she loved this church and would do anything for it!" I was inspired.

The weeks leading up to this event were busy for both me and Maryanne. We each had some bad news in our family.  I wondered if I could handle it all as I turned to God in prayer.  With less than a week to go before the luncheon, I was surprised to receive a rather abrupt text from Maryanne saying she is just too exhausted to help out at the event.  No apology, no real empathy for me and where was that great love for her church that she had spoken of?

I sometimes struggle with forgiveness but in this case I felt a wave of forgiveness immediately.  In fact, I kind of felt sorry for her.  She seemed to have very poor coping skills.  She does feel love for her church but does not understand that love is an action word.  That giving your word means serving sometimes even when it hurts.  Maryanne has yet to learn the principle of covenant love.  

Covenant love is the kind of love that is forever.  It loves when times are difficult.  It is the kind of love that continues when people have wronged us.  It is the love of Jesus Christ who forgives us each and every time we wrong or reject him when we confess our sins. Knowing how imperfect that we are Jesus still chose to die in our place. The luncheon was successful, thank God. But, pivotal for me, I learned something important that day about covenant love and keeping promises.  I must extend that to others.








* the names and some events are changed to perserve anonymity.
**V.B.S. stands for Vacation Bible School