The shouts of today are so loud that I do not hear the echoes of yesterday, nor do I listen to the faint whispers of tomorrow. All I really know is what is clamoring in my ear right here, right now. That makes me lose perspective. The shouts of today are so insistently loud that I do not hear the dwindling echoes of yesterday, nor do I listen to the faint and distant whispers of tomorrow. I forget what I have promised, just because I am trying to handle right now.
Sometimes it takes a crisis to focus me on the commitments I have made, for the truth is that I have miles to go before I sleep, and promises to keep. And promises to keep.
Poet Robert Frost’s poignant words:
"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have miles to go before I sleep, And promises to keep, And promises to keep."
Beneath the apparent tranquility of the poet’s lines there lingers a restiveness, because he knows he is nearing the end of his life, and there are things he has promised to do, but has not done. There are commitments he has made, but has not kept.
Haven’t we all made promises? Which promises do we keep and which ones do we set aside? Which promises are sacred, never to be broken, and which ones are ho-hum, if it’s convenient? I don’t know about you, but I find in my own life that the promises I make to other people I do my best to keep. But the promises I make to God and to myself are not so sacred. The promises I make to God and to myself are easily broken. What’s that all about?
About two weeks ago George Clanton asked me to offer a prayer in his father’s funeral. Of course I promised to do that. That was the least I could do. I intended to keep that promise. I set out from home the morning of the service, having worked on something else until the last minute, one of my more dangerous habits, and I drove to Mt. Horeb Baptist Church, carefully calculating the swiftest route. But I had not counted on a couple of things. I had not counted on missing the correct turn off Kenilworth Avenue; and I had not counted on having to park a couple of blocks away. By the time I entered the place, the service had already begun, the usher could not seem to help me, and I was just about to panic. But thank you, Lord, as I staggered down an aisle I heard my name called, and I got that prayer in on time! Whew! Now what was my anxiety about? Why was I so hurried? Because I had made a promise to George, and it matters to me that I keep my promises to people. That I had promised myself the last time something like this happened that I would give myself an extra fifteen minutes of driving time – that didn’t enter in. That I had promised God that I would not rush into His presence breathless and bothered – that didn’t even come to mind. All that mattered was that I keep a promise to a friend. Do you see? The promises we make to others we keep; the promises that we make to God and to ourselves are often forgotten.
Another example: I mentioned to you last week that I had spent much of the previous afternoon visiting a prisoner at the DC Jail. What I did not tell you was how much trouble it is to visit anyone there. The inmate I am working with had called me and asked me come; the only times you can visit there are Wednesday evenings and Saturday afternoons. Wednesday evening is out, because I have to be the Priest and the Levite here and cannot stop for those on the side of the road! But I promised I would visit him that Saturday.
Well, you have to call at least twenty-four hours ahead of time, and I tried. I really did. They gave me three numbers to call; on one of them I got nothing; on the second I got a message, "This number is not in service"; and on the third I got a recording, asking me to state my name and the purpose for which I was calling. I did that, but no one ever called back, and so when Saturday came, I had no permission to visit. So I stayed home. Well, on Tuesday I got a stinger of a letter – obviously I did not care, I was more interested in the people that pay my salary, and so on and so on. That hurt! So that week I put our secretary on the phone –it took her an hour to get through – and I moved heaven and earth to get to that jail. I was not going to disappoint this man again. I was not going to break this promise again. That I had promised myself to do certain other things that Saturday no longer mattered. That I had promised the Lord that I would get the sermon done early that weekend never really entered into it. I could not break my promise to someone who was counting on me.
For the promises we make to others we keep; the promises that we make to God and to ourselves are often forgotten. The shouts of today are so loud that we do not hear the echoes of yesterday, nor do we listen to the faint whispers of tomorrow. But we must know that we have promises to keep before we sleep.
King David was a weary warrior, about to sleep with his fathers. He did not have long to live, and he knew it. But David was about to find out that even at that stage of life, he still had work to do. He had promises to keep before he sleeps.
One of David’s sons, Adonijah, was ambitious, and wanted to become king. Never mind that his father David had not yet died. Never mind that it was by no means clear in this kingdom that the crown is passed from father to son; after all, David himself did not get it that way. And never mind, most of all, that David had not promised the throne to Adonijah, but to another son, Solomon. None of that mattered to this crafty and ambitious young man. He wanted to be king and he went about gathering support. The Kingdom of Israel was about to go into full-fledged crisis.
But, as anybody who will be watching the World Series this week must know, "It ain’t over ’til it’s over". And David’s wife Bathsheba and her son, Solomon, along with Nathan the prophet, intervened, and got David back on course with his promise-keeping. Let’s look more closely at this.
I
First, isn’t it true that we make optimistic promises when we are young? Don’t we set out on courses that are not necessarily practical? When we are young, naive and confident, we think we can do it all. We believe we can conquer the world. We make huge promises to ourselves and to God. But something happens along the way. Something changes. We get older - not necessarily wiser, just older - and our early promises are set aside by the demands of what we call the "real world". Our wide-open promises are shut down because we let the distractions of everyday living get to us.
I remember that when I was about twelve years old, in a burst of spiritual enthusiasm, I promised myself and the Lord that I would read the Bible all the way through, cover to cover. I really thought I could do that. I set the goal of reading four chapters a day, and launched into this program.
Genesis was fine; I had read most of that in Sunday School anyway. And Exodus was pretty good; some of that was quite exciting. But next came Leviticus, which was a real drag, and then Numbers, which droned on and on ... I never even got to Deuteronomy, much less everything else! A youthful promise to God foundered on reality.
A few years later I stood watching my small son repeat the oath that made him a Cub Scout. On the way home that night, Bryan leaned over the car seat and said, with all of his seven-year-old earnestness, "Dad, this is the best night of my life." Yes, the best night of your life, my son, because you have just promised to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, obedient, and a host of other things. But we will see how long these promises will last. To spare his reputation I will say nothing of his teenage and young adult years! Let me just report that youthful promises do break down under the pressure of complex demands.
Do you know what I am talking about? Do you know about failed dreams and broken promises made to yourself and to God? Do you understand that human weakness makes it inevitable that we will fail to do what we have promised to do? It’s hard, this promise-keeping! Promises are too difficult, the things we told ourselves we were going to do. David forgot about his promise to make Solomon king; there was too much going in on his life and he abandoned it. Just as most of the people who have stood before you in recent years to announce that they were going to seminary to train for ministry have told you that they were conscious of the call to ministry earlier in their lives, but they got into the working world, and failed to keep those promises. Too many distractions. Just as when I was a piano student and the teacher would give me a new piece to learn, I promised myself I would practice it and get it right - but the pages were dotted with so many notes that it looked as though someone had splattered ink all over the score. It was too tough, I wanted to give up. Just as last week my tiny granddaughter, Olivia, having been given a plastic tennis racket, swung at the ball three or four times, missing it every time, then put her head down on the couch and announced as only a two-year-old can, "I’m never going to play this game again" - just so we find that all we have promised to our God is too hard. It does not come easy in this distracting world. The promises we made at our baptism, to live like Jesus - forgotten about. The promises we made when we received the right hand of fellowship into the church, to worship and study, to tithe and serve - abandoned. Too hard. Too demanding.
David had thought, early on, it would be easy to promise Solomon the throne and make it happen. But his life got complicated and he forgot about his promises. The shouts of today are so insistently loud that we do not hear the dwindling echoes of yesterday, nor do we listen to the faint and distant whispers of tomorrow. David forgot what he had promised, just because he was trying to handle right now.
II
But notice that David did not live in a vacuum. Notice that David had some folk around who called him to accountability. Bathsheba, his wife; and Solomon, his son; and Nathan, his pastor - well, maybe that’s a stretch, but it’s not far off – Bathsheba and Solomon and Nathan intervened. They ganged up and called David to account. Not only did they force David to face the facts about himself, but they pointed out that he was disappointing the whole nation. Bathsheba put it into words, "... the eyes of all Israel are on you to tell them who shall sit on the throne... otherwise it will come to pass, when ... the king sleeps with his ancestors, that my son Solomon and I will be counted offenders." David, if you do not have the integrity to keep your promises, there will be consequences. Somebody will get hurt, and your people will not trust you any more.
Remember what I said earlier? That if we make promises to God and to ourselves, we may well forget about them, but when we make promises to other people, we hurry to keep those promises. One of the greatest instruments the Lord has to help us keep our commitments is the intervention of people who care about us. I hope you have somebody in your life who brings you to account. I hope you have somebody who is not afraid to tell you what you have done or what you have failed to dol. There is no wake-up call like a flesh-and-blood intervention from someone who will tell you, "You hurt me." Someone who loves you enough to tell you what you cannot face about yourself.
I feel blessed to have had any number of such people in my life. I know that, as much of a mess as I am, I would be double and triple that mess if it had not been for folks who cared enough to tell me the very worst. You know that Hallmark slogan, "When you care enough to send the very best"? Be grateful if you have had the other side of that equation - people who care enough to send the very worst!
I think of the deacon in my home church who told me he couldn’t follow my first attempts at preaching because I tried to pack too much in. I remember the music director who told me I was too full of ideas, and that I needed warmth. Most of all, I remember the night my life partner stopped me in my tracks and reminded me that my promise to her and to our two little children was to be at home with them, not everlastingly out somewhere doing what I proudly called the Lord’s work. Nor shall I fail to mention the people in this congregation who have questioned me and have asked me whether what I was doing was truly in line with what I had promised when I came. Oh, thank God, if you have in your life people who will call you to account, people who will make you face your promises, people who will point out that if you do not stay on course, you will hurt others. Thank God for life partners like Bathsheba; marriage may not be orange blossoms and roses all the time, but a good marriage is founded on promise-keeping and on accountability. Thank God for children like Solomon, able to confront his father and bring the old man down a peg or two. And -- dare I say it? -- somebody needs to thank God if you sense you have a Nathan-type pastor who will preach the truth and who will lovingly sit with you and remind you what you have promised. Thank God for such as these, for without them the shouts of today would be so insistently loud that we would not hear the dwindling echoes of yesterday, nor would we listen to the faint and distant whispers of tomorrow. With friends like these, we just might keep our promises before we sleep.
III
Well, David responded. David made it happen. He saw to it that Solomon and not Adonijah was made king in Israel. When the nation’s leaders came to the old man to praise him for keeping his promises, David responded in a prayer of praise. David knew that the promises to others were also his promises to himself and to his God, and so David bowed in worship and offered up this prayer of praise: "Blessed be the lord, the God of Israel, who today has granted one .of my offspring to sit on my throne and permitted me to witness it."
What a grand prayer! To see the goodness of God in all this! Isn’t His grace amazing? Look at it. The weary warrior, worn out and ground down by meeting demands, distracted from the commitments he had made early in his life - this weary warrior, who might have ended with nothing but shattered dreams and deep disappointments, David now comes to the end of the road with something to show for it. David can pray a prayer of thanksgiving, for his life is fulfilled. He didn’t get everything he wanted, no. He would like to have had all of his sons and daughters find success. He would have preferred that all his children thrive. But David is able to thank God that at least one of his offspring sits on the throne, one of his children has taken on his legacy, someone has heard the message. That is nothing less than the grace of God, who cares about us, and who wants us to feel fulfillment and joy!
Not long ago I sat with an older man as he shared with me the story of his life. He spoke of his disappointments and difficulties. He mentioned his children and the challenges in their lives. He spoke of the disappointments he had experienced from racism and of the dangers he had met in his chosen profession. But then he also told me about people who had taught him things - about a pastor who had reached out to him, about a person of another race and religion who had instructed him. Our conversation that day ended with this brother saying, "I feel good about my life. It hasn’t been perfect, but I’ve accomplished something." And then he said the key thing. He said, "Every day I pray and I thank God for all I’ve been through, because He has let me see some success, and I am thankful." Just like King David, that prayer of praise, "Blessed be the Lord... who today has granted one of my offspring to sit on my throne and [has] permitted me to witness it."
Brothers and sisters, God wants to grant us the desires of our hearts, if we keep the promises we have made to Him. Yes, we’ll get sidetracked. The demands and distractions of the real world are too much for us, and we’ll lose our way. But grace has brought us safe thus far and grace will lead us home. Thanks be to God, who gives us spiritual friends to bring us to account and call us back to our promises. Just look at the results, feel the outcome! Promises to keep before we sleep, and we did not keep them all; but God is faithful, and God grants us a measure of fulfillment before the end.
Oh, count it all joy! Count it part of the amazing grace of a living Lord. We had promises to keep before we sleep. By the grace of God, we can keep them, so that even when we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we first begun.
