Be Still And Know

Proverbs 25:18 Telling lies about others is as harmful as hitting them with an axe, wounding them with a sword, or shooting them with a sharp arrow. Lying is a terrible business, and the writer of Proverbs captures its awful destructiveness. It is a very tempting route when the truth is hard to face. The temptation is to at least bend the truth so that its sharper edges aren’t obvious. However, when you start lying, it is very hard to stop. Washington Allston, the American artist and poet, wrote: “Nothing is rarer than a solitary lie; for lies breed like toads; you cannot tell one but out it comes with a hundred little ones on its back.” Lying becomes nothing less than a tragic way of life for those who choose its path. The writer of Proverbs wants his readers to understand that the only way of life worth living is one where the truth is treasured. Phillips Brooks, the hymn writer, wrote: “Truth is always strong, no matter how weak it looks, and falsehood is always weak, no matter how strong it looks.” Dur