The Truth

'The time has come,' the Walrus said,
'To talk of many things:
Of shoes -- and ships -- and sealing wax –
Of cabbages -- and kings.”

A promise of a better life. A promise of excitement and an escape from the mundane. A promise that I will be fulfilled with the result, and the only cost involved will be an acceptance on my part. A promise that there is no reward for doing the right thing, but then again, no consequence for doing the wrong thing, either. A promise that sin is only relative to the person that commits it. A promise that I will, in the end, get the good things in life that I so richly deserve.

Satan makes so many promises to me, and yet he keeps none of them. And despite this, I often simply follow along, much like the oysters in the Lewis Carroll poem posted above. He distracts me with a lot of talk that may seem perfectly logical; filling my heart with reasons why I need what he alone seems to be able to offer. He talks so much. He says so many things. He flatters me with the things that in my fallen state I long to hear. In so doing he lulls me to sleep, unaware that I have been taken down the dark, wrong path yet again. And it is then that I realize it is all of my own doing. It is merely a trap but usually it is much too late when I discover it to be so. Once again, I find myself filleted on the beach and wondering what happened to me.

Jesus, on the other hand, has a still, soft voice. Sometimes it is hard to hear Him over the noise in my own life and the world I in which I reside. To hear his voice I have to stand still and remain quiet. It requires a time for me to be alone in prayer and in the meditation that comes from reading His Word. Jesus does not make empty promises just to see me stumble and fall; he offers me truth. His truth.

Though we may not realize it, there is inside each of us a hunger and a desire for the things that are truthful and honest. And despite our natural, fallen state, it is so. No one wants to be ‘taken for a ride’ by a friends, a co-worker, a spouse, their children, or even Satan himself. When someone proves themselves to be chronically untrustworthy, we shun them. At the very least we are less apt to believe what they tell us later on. This can also become a problem for us when we realize that we have a tendency to be less than honest ourselves. As the years roll by, we can end up much like Pilate, wondering aloud, “What is truth?”

As a Christian, I understand the grace that comes from knowing Jesus personally in my heart. I love that grace even though I can scarcely understand or barely comprehend it. His grace saved me from my sin and has prepared a way for me to be righteous before God. Because of His grace, He has prepared a place for me in Heaven one day.

But there is even more to Jesus than the grace he so abundantly delivered to us: “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” John 1:2

Jesus brought grace to mankind and the blessing of salvation that comes with it. But He also brought truth. Without that truth, His promises would be nearly as empty as the ones put forth by Satan that I mentioned above. It was a package plan: Without truth, there can be no grace, and without grace, there can be no truth.

Jesus is the truth. I do my best to ponder upon that when the voice of Satan begins ‘talking many things’ to me, making those empty promises that I know he will never keep.