Tiny Devotional for Thursday, 08-19-2021

 A great good evening to all my friends and neighbors in Internet Land! And to family members who have dropped by, I’m eating Ramen.

A false witness will not go unpunished,
And he who tells lies will not escape.
Proverbs 19:5, NASB

I started writing this after 10 PM, so I won’t miss a day. I DID do some other spiritual writing, about Taylor Schumann’s book; you can read that here.

Okay, back to the Proverb: You can’t get away with telling a lie (even if you had a good reason).

I recall running a support group for 8th grade boys, who were dealing with some racial conflicts. In order to make a point, I showed them a long-ago picture of me and an older black woman, and I told them that was my mother. 

Now, whatever point I was trying to move to never happened, because the teacher (a black woman my age) was so astounded that she kept questioning me, and I had to maintain the fiction to keep in character. Eventually, the group was over, but I was back in my office before I realized I had never fessed up! It was the VERY end of the day, and I had to run down the halls (a no-no) to get back to the class to do a proper (quick) debrief.

Had I not done the debrief, what was intended as a counseling gimmick would have turned into a lie, and who knows WHERE that would have lead?

Try this thought: lies start with words, but end in a lifestyle. 

Now, try this thought: isn’t that what happens in an abusive home?

Lies told to protect an abuser won’t stop the abuse. Let’s all stop trying to make that happen.

Peace be on your household.

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