The older I get, the more I notice how often I fail to live up to my commitments, how often I say that I will do one thing and end up doing something quite different, how often I am unwilling or unable to make good on my promises to myself as well as to others. In the morning I say to myself, “today, I will definitely get started on that article I promised to write” or “today, I will absolutely start clearing out that file drawer that is so crammed with stuff that I can hardly get it open, “ or “today, I will diligently catch up on the household accounts, and next time I won’t let them go for so long.” Then, by the time I exercise, have breakfast, answer the emails that accumulated overnight, spend some time shopping online for the current thing that I think I cannot live without, read an interesting article or two in the newspaper, and attend an online meeting or have a long, chatty phone call with a friend, the day is gone and I haven’t even started on whatever it was that I promised myself that I would get to that day.
Noticing that about myself gives me a lot of sympathy for the son who said he would go work in his father’s field but never quite got there.* It’s easy to accuse him of being a hypocrite, of saying one thing and doing another, of knowing all along that he never intended to do what his father asked him to do. It’s easy to acknowledge that the one who initially refused to go work in the vineyard and later changed his mind was actually more obedient than the one who said “yes” and then didn’t live up to his intention.
But when I stop and remember all the promises I have never kept, all the good intentions that never quite worked out, all the ways that I have failed to be the person that I set out to be, it gets more difficult to condemn the disobedient person that Jesus describes in the parable. Like the priests and elders who questioned Jesus about his authority to teach and heal, I want to do the will of God, but too often am unable to live up to my perfect vision of myself. Still, I want to whine, don’t good intentions count for something? Even if they don’t, Jesus doesn’t seem to be saying that I won’t get to live in the kin-dom of God if I fail to do what I said I would do. No matter my failures, I am loved and forgiven, so that I can forgive others, and try again.
–Deborah Sokolove, Seekers Church
Questions:
- What do you do when someone else fails to live up to their stated intentions?
- What good intentions have you been unable to keep?
- What keeps you from carrying out your good intentions?
