I love the line from the original Mary Poppins where Mary says, “Oh, those are pie crust promises…easily made, easily broken!” I suspect most of us make promises with good intentions, feeling sure that we can deliver on whatever it was we said we would do. No doubt, we make efforts to follow through, but so often, something else interrupts our plan. Whenever that happens in my life, I somehow picture the broken piecrust and wonder how I can fix it to make it presentable again.
As a kid, my mother taught me and my sisters how to bake. We learned to measure ingredients, knead some dough, and bake everything from actual recipes. We even learned to make pie crust. Mom was a master at apple pies and had she entered the local county fair, probably could have won a prize. Her pie crust was lovely and flakey and most of us would not contend that that was easy to do. In fact, we make promises much easier than we can make pie crust.
So, here’s the point. what can we do to truly make promises we can keep? The Bible reminds us not to make any vows to God, because it’s likely that we’ll break them. Yet, we do make vows and less serious promises and we break those too. Why? Maybe in part, we didn’t stop to evaluate what it would mean if we couldn’t follow through. We didn’t measure the sadness on a child’s face when we didn’t show up for the sporting event or the school play. We didn’t consider the disappointment of our spouse when we forgot our anniversary or missed out on a plan we agreed to weeks before. We made pie crust promises.
Many of us rely on God’s promises. We trust that He will deliver on everything He said He would do. We believe that He is faithful and steadfast and even when things don’t happen in the time frame we expected, we know that God will still come through. His promises are as eternal as a rainbow. We know He will show up when the conditions are just right.
So, today, consider those big promises and little ones that you make to others and even to yourself, and be honest. If you can’t honestly say you will fulfill that promise, then don’t make it at all. It’s okay to say you’ll try to be somewhere, or you hope to be able to do something, but don’t promise anything you can’t do. It’s just a thought, but I wanted to pass it along.
Now, where’s mom’s pie crust recipe?