Promises, Promises
31/05/07 10:15 Filed in: Musings
So the election is over, the posters are coming down – although a lot more slowly than they went up – and the post-election shuffling and bargaining has begun. Who will end up making up the government. Who will be Fianna Fail’s partners? Will they have partners?
And already the newspaper cartoonists have poked fun at how fast the election pledges will fail. Promises made for this investment, and for that development, promises made for changes in health or education. Promises made on local levels for new this and improved that.
And the public knows that much of what was promised is outside the power of the politician to achieve. They know that although a person might want to do something, party policies or national demands may make that promise undeliverable.
I find it fascinating that men and women who expect us to regard them as people of integrity make so many promises in the run up to elections that will never be fulfilled.
The upshot of it all is that we become sceptical of promises. We doubt when people hold out the hope of a better future. We’ve been there too often, only to be disappointed. And not just with politicians – but with advertisers, or some new programme of weight loss, or confidence boosting, or investment, or pyramid selling. All have promised to change our lives for the better. Yet here we still are.
And we become calloused and cynical.
The problem with all of these is that no guarantee of success is provided up front. We have to invest before we see results. But there is another promise giver – one who offers a hope and a better future, one who always keeps his word, one who has nothing to gain from our allegiance, one who pays so that we don’t have to.
He promises peace, He promises strength, He promises never to leave us, He promises to accept us when we come to him. How do we know he will keep his promises? Simple; the apostle Paul writes, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:20).
Paul is saying, if you want to know whether God will keep his promises all you have to do is look to the cross of Christ. For there God provides the evidence up front that he is serious when he promises. He will provide no matter the cost to him. He pays so that we don’t have to. Trusting in God is a foolproof investment because, unlike politics, the results are already in place.
Although God’s promises are far beyond what we can imagine we mustn’t let our scepticism stand in the way of trusting Jesus.
And already the newspaper cartoonists have poked fun at how fast the election pledges will fail. Promises made for this investment, and for that development, promises made for changes in health or education. Promises made on local levels for new this and improved that.
And the public knows that much of what was promised is outside the power of the politician to achieve. They know that although a person might want to do something, party policies or national demands may make that promise undeliverable.
I find it fascinating that men and women who expect us to regard them as people of integrity make so many promises in the run up to elections that will never be fulfilled.
The upshot of it all is that we become sceptical of promises. We doubt when people hold out the hope of a better future. We’ve been there too often, only to be disappointed. And not just with politicians – but with advertisers, or some new programme of weight loss, or confidence boosting, or investment, or pyramid selling. All have promised to change our lives for the better. Yet here we still are.
And we become calloused and cynical.
The problem with all of these is that no guarantee of success is provided up front. We have to invest before we see results. But there is another promise giver – one who offers a hope and a better future, one who always keeps his word, one who has nothing to gain from our allegiance, one who pays so that we don’t have to.
He promises peace, He promises strength, He promises never to leave us, He promises to accept us when we come to him. How do we know he will keep his promises? Simple; the apostle Paul writes, “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ” (2 Corinthians 1:20).
Paul is saying, if you want to know whether God will keep his promises all you have to do is look to the cross of Christ. For there God provides the evidence up front that he is serious when he promises. He will provide no matter the cost to him. He pays so that we don’t have to. Trusting in God is a foolproof investment because, unlike politics, the results are already in place.
Although God’s promises are far beyond what we can imagine we mustn’t let our scepticism stand in the way of trusting Jesus.