Honest to God

Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.-- Winston Churchill

I have come to a very harsh reality this morning as I was preparing for class. Am I honest? Many would use the word integrity but I have pretty much camped on the word honest. If you are anything like me this word conjures up images of the past. When you could walk down Main Street without hearing sirens or gun shots and safely purchase a cream soda from the candy store clerk. You may be asking yourself, "Well OK to whom do you have a problem being honest too." My feeling is that I am not too honest with myself any more. In my communication to God I know that I have nothing in which to hide, mask, or lie about, but to myself I show no such transparency. To myself, I hide, divert and redirect as much truth about myself as I can. In front of God I know that I am a man in need of much help and grace and rarely do I offer the same to myself. A wise man once told a story found in the book of Luke; he talked about trees bearing good and bad fruit and about two men who built a house, one on solid ground and the other on sand. To be honest with you, I have heard these stories told hundreds of times and applied in a thousand different ways. However, I must share with you a revelation, a reviewing if you will that I had this morning. Neither the bad tree nor the man building on the sand was ever honest with themselves in what they were doing. The man building the house on sand never stopped and said, "Wait a minute! What am I doing building a house on sand, I need to stop immediately." Instead, he continued and we know the result. The tree never stopped to think what it could do differently to produce better fruit. I pray that we have the bravery and courage to be honest with ourselves and our faith. I hope that we exchange what is real within ourselves and that truth overlaps in how we communicate to the world.