Today's Daily Lesson comes from Luke chapter 11 verses 53 through 54 and chapter 12 verses 1 through 3:
53 As he went away from there, the scribes and the Pharisees began to press him hard and to provoke him to speak about many things, 54 lying in wait for him, to catch him in something he might say.
In the meantime, when so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one another, he began to say to his disciples first, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.2 Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.3 Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops."
For Christians, what we say that gets us into trouble ought not to be what is secretly recorded in a conversation or Wikileaked from our emails. What ought to bring us trouble is what we state clearly and forthrightly before God and everybody us. What ought to get a Christian in trouble is not our deception or duplicity or hypocrisy but our truth.
There comes a moment when we all need to speak our truth and let the chips fall where they may. This the moment when we feel compelled to take what has thus far only been whispered under the cover of darkness and discretion of marriage bed and to speak it on the floor of congregational meeting or the in-law dinner table. This is the moment of truth.
How to do it? I've always liked what that great champion of senior citizen rights, "Gray Panther", Maggie Kuhn said:
"Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes."
Our feeble voices may tremble and quiver, but one little word of unalloyed truth has the power to shudder the whole world.
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