After the funeral of Martin Luther King, one of the newsmen covering the event stopped to talk to an old man standing at the edges of the cemetery. The reporter asked him: "What did this man mean to you? Why was he special to you?" The old man, through tears, answered simply: "He was a great man because he was faithful. He believed in us when we had stopped believing in ourselves, he stayed with us even when we weren't worth staying with!"
That is a testimony to a life well-lived. If, at your funeral, someone says that of you, then you have lived your life well, even if there had been many times in your life when things weren't going well. To be full of faith means precisely to be faithful. When you have great faith in God, you exercise great surrender to the faithfulness of His ways. And that in turn makes you faithful to your Maker.
And, perhaps the greatest gift we can give to those around us is the promise of faithfulness, the simple promise to stay around, to not to leave when things get difficult, to not walk away because we feel disappointed or hurt, to stay even when we don't feel wanted or valued, to stay even when our personalities and visions clash, to stay through thick and thin. Isn't that what God is to us in His faithfulness? He never fails us nor forsakes us. He is faithful.
Too often what happens is that, in our commitments, we subtly blackmail each other: We commit ourselves to family, church, company, and friendship but with the unspoken condition: I will stay with you as long as you don't seriously disappointment or hurt me. But if you do, I will move on! I will leave you – I will disengage emotionally with you; I will leave church; I will leave the company; I will move on.
No family, friendship, church, or community can survive on this premise because it is simply impossible to live or work with each other for any length of time without seriously disappointing and hurting each other.
Inside of any relationship - marriage, family, friendship, church community, or even a collegial relationship at a workplace - we can never promise that we won't disappoint others, that we won't ever mess-up, that our personalities won't clash, or that we won't sometimes hurt others through insensitivity, selfishness, and weakness. We can't promise that we will always be good. We can only promise that we will always be there! The only gift that we can give is our faithfulness.
And, in the end, that promise is enough because if we stay and don't blackmail each other by walking away when there is disappointment and hurt, then the disappointments and the hurts can be worked through and redeemed by a faith and love that stay for the long haul. When there is faithfulness within a relationship, eventually the hurts and misunderstandings wash clean and even bitterness turns to love.
I look back at my life as I approach fifty and I am so thankful for the people who have given me their gift of faithfulness. I visited with a eighty-six year old this past week. I have known her for the last thirty years. She treats me like a son. She has seen me through many ups and downs. But she remained there for me with one constant gift – faithfulness.
I think of my staff. Many have come and gone but there remain a few who have been there with me through thick and thin and are still going strong; in fact, stronger than ever before and the gift they have given me is faithfulness.
Blessed is the man or woman who, on celebrating the anniversary of a marriage or the joy of a birthday or the commitment a calling, or the tenacity of a friendship, looks back and no longer feels the countless hurts, rejections, misunderstandings, and bitter moments, that were also part of that journey. These are washed clean by something deeper that has grown up because there has been faithfulness!
The greatest gift that we have to give is the promise of faithfulness, the promise that we will keep trying, that we won't walk away simply because we got hurt or because we felt unwanted or not properly valued.
We are all weak, wounded, sinful, and easily hurt. Inside of our marriages, families, churches, friendships, and places of work, we cannot promise that we won't disappoint each other and, worse still, that we won't hurt each other. But we can promise that we won't walk away because of disappointment and hurt. That's all we can promise - and that's enough!
