Making Our Word Good

A recent experience highlighted an important lesson—we must develop the reputation of being good to our word by always striving to do what we say we will do.

On a recent trip to visit my daughter and granddaughter, I broke my foot. When you are with a lively 6-year-old and a rambunctious Labrador puppy, you have to be very careful! While trying to prevent the puppy from tearing up one of my granddaughter’s toys, a piece of furniture got in the way. It hindered the rescue and I ended up with a broken foot!

A 5-year-old’s story

Around the same time I had a visit from a brother. Because of distance, I don’t get a chance to see him often. We had fun and interesting conversations making up for our lost time. We laughed a lot about our childhood, the pranks we used to pull and many things our parents said and taught us.

On this visit, my brother mentioned something that our father had said to him as a 5-year-old boy (before I was born). Dad said to him, “If your word is not good, you might as well be dead.” My 5-year-old brother replied, “Oh, does that mean I am going to die?” Dad replied, “Oh no, of course not! It just means you won’t be any good to anyone.”

I must admit that I was shocked at this being said to a 5-year-old. That is, until I thought about it some more. Was there an important lesson I could derive from this seemingly harsh statement?

Reflections about a broken foot

I had plenty of time to sit and think while resting my broken foot. While thinking, Proverbs 25:19 came to mind: “Confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble is like a bad tooth and a foot out of joint” (emphasis added throughout).

Nobody needs an unfaithful person in his or her life, just as no one needs a broken foot! There were so many things I could have been doing—fun things like playing with a very energetic granddaughter and jogging on a glorious, white, sandy beach with a Labrador puppy—or helpful things like shopping and making meals for an overworked daughter.

So I sat there, feeling guilty that I was not very useful to anyone. However, I could still read and think, so the situation helped me to internalize this piece of wisdom about being faithful to our word. To be useful and productive, we must be good to our word!

Another verse in Psalm 15:4 came to mind. In the context of describing a person who will be in God’s Kingdom, David wrote: “He who swears to his own hurt and does not change.”

This means that if I give my word to someone, I should stick to it—even though it might end up being very difficult or costly to do so. Of course, there are times when extenuating circumstances may require us to make a change to something we told someone we would do. But a phone call with an apology or an explanation and offer to fulfill the commitment at another time can help in that rare circumstance. The point is that we should be known by our faithfulness in fulfilling our word!

So, in thinking about the fact that my word should be trustworthy, it now seemed rather good advice for a dad to say this to his son: If your word is not good, you might as well be dead.

But I hope the next time I hear some words of wisdom like that I don’t have to have them made clearer by a broken foot!

To learn more about the importance of being good to your word, read “Lying vs. Telling the Truth.”