Growing up as a little kid, my friends and I would love to play and hang out. Occasionally one of us would offer to ask their parents to host a sleepover and immediately the rest of us would ask, do you promise? Whoever offered would respond with an excited yes, and we would then secure the deal by saying – do you pinky promise to ask your parents? We all knew when we extended our pinky fingers and shook on it, that the deal was done and that we could start getting pumped for the sleepover. Growing up if a friend promised something, we could count on it happening and there was a huge sense of security knowing that I could count on my friends and what they promised.
Over the last decade, and specifically over the last handful of years, our society has changed. People offer promises as a normal part of a conversation with unfortunately few of those promises being kept. This has brough in influx of distrust, hurt, and feelings of insecurity. People have a difficult time knowing who or what they can trust. People begin to doubt that what people are saying is true and even worse, people start believing that they are being manipulated into action or belief. With the degradation of legitimacy of promises, we are finding our culture and society in a perilous place of distrust, insecurity, and self protection.
I have reflected over the past 2 years and have realized that many times I have been promised that things would happen, opportunities would be realized, and that relationships would happen and few, if any of those have actually occurred. I also then evaluated my own offers of promise and realized that some of the promises that I have made were not followed through. What has resulted from that is my trust in some people has been eroded and even more unfortunately, some of the trust people had me has been damaged. I have had to fight against the feelings of being alone, not good enough, and not worth it. My desire to jump into the next opportunity with those who haven’t followed through on their promises is low and I find myself living a skeptical life and passing that on to the people that are closest to me.
And then God reminds me of what can happen when promises are kept. Hope is restored. Trust is rebuilt. Unity is strengthened. Movement is achieved. Purpose and value are lived out. God was a constant promise keeper. When God was angry at a world who had walked away from Him and the flood came that wiped everything off of the face of the earth besides Noah and his family and two of every animal and bird, He didn’t stop keeping His promise of loving His creation and then after the flood and Noah’s sacrifice, God decided to up His promise and send a reminder that He is trustworthy and a promise keeper. God gave us the rainbow as a sign that He will never wipe out humanity no matter how awful it becomes.
I deeply appreciate the reminder that rainbows are God’s promise that He believes in and loves humanity. When I see a rainbow, I know that God cares about me and that I’m worth it. I also wonder, what would change if I became a promise keeper and if I could offer people around me something as a reminder that I am trustworthy. What would change in the teams I leave, the people I invest into, my family if I made the commitment to be a promise keeper and if I could earn their trust in a way that how I lived my life became a symbol of trust, value, and security in their lives? How could we as a people shift culture by becoming promise keepers, not just promise makers? What could God do with a community of people that were known as people who kept their promises?