Promises Shouldn't Be Like Pie Crust

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My mother made the best pie crust in the world. She gave all the credit to Tenderflake and often told me about her struggles in the early days on the farm when her parents rendered their own lard. The consistency varied from year to year which made pie making a bit of a challenge—you could never be sure how the crust was going to turn out. Making good pies was a matter of reputation since the threshing crews that came through to help with the harvest were experts in pie crust and if a certain farmer’s wife presented them with tough, inedible crust, the whole neighbourhood would soon know about it. When it come to pie crust, we want tender, flaky and melt-in-your-mouth.

Someone once said that promises are like pie crusts—lightly treated and easily broken. Unfortunately, that is often true. Promises are easily made and just as easily forgotten. “Tender” is good in pie crusts, but bad in promises.

We often make better promise breakers than we do promise keepers. Happily, God is not like us, though we are commanded to be like Him. Unlike us, He keeps His promises.

Noah, and those who followed him, were constantly reminded of God’s faithfulness to the promises He has made. Genesis 9:13,15 (NIV) tells us: “I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth…between me and you and all the living creatures of every kind.” The reference, of course, was to God’s promise never again to cut off all life on earth through a flood.

But the rainbow serves also to remind us of more than that specific promise. It also serves to remind us that all of God’s promises are just as unbreakable. We may claim them inappropriately or consider them broken because we don’t have the patience to wait for God to work out all the details leading to their fulfillment. We may expect God to keep His part of the contract when we aren’t willing to hold up our end. But the cracks in the system are inevitably ours, not His.

He keeps His promises. And that assurance is what makes getting up in the morning possible.