James 5:12
… let your “Yes” be yes and your “No” be no…

“You agreed to this price,” I said. “Yes,” he replied, “but I didn’t sign anything. That means that I am not committed to that price. And things have changed. I had no idea that the demand for these would be so great.”
When is a promise a promise? When is a commitment binding? The issues are not ancient, but very contemporary. We have had to make legal distinctions, many of which I do not understand, to establish when a man’s handshake is legally binding and when it isn’t.
For example, if the conversation I had had with the individual in the story was the result of his discovery that the value of the item had been truly underestimated, in my mind that would have changed everything. Sometimes we do not know the true value of something when we agree to sell it at a given price. But that hadn’t happened. The only change was the level of interest in the items for sale. Between my conversation with him and the time that I stopped to purchase the item, another series of phone inquiries had occurred. But there was no real discovery that he had under valued the item at all. It was that now he thought he could sell it for more… regardless of what he had agreed to sell it for to me.
I am reminded of a true story of a woman who had received an original oil painting from an aunt. She never really liked it – it was a western scene to which she was not really attracted. But for the sake of her love for her aunt, she put it up on the wall. When her aunt died, she was going to put it in a garage sale and unload it. But her family asked her to at least get it appraised. The appraisal came in at a value of millions of dollars! But if she had sold it at a garage sale and the buyer had later discovered its value, then it would have been the buyer’s delight.
Not long ago I was offered a duck decoy. The price was reasonable but, since I am a novice at this, I asked a friend for his opinion. His assessment was that it was worth many times what I could pay for it. My dilemma was that I hadn’t purchased it. So, in order to be fair, I went to my friend and revealed its real value… and a sale for that price was made to someone else because I couldn’t afford it.
James is interested in teaching us that promises are precious. We ought to know when we are making them – and we ought to know when we shouldn’t make them. More than that, we ought to strive to execute our relationships with care and integrity. I think he’s right, don’t you?
Lord Jesus, help me grow in my honesty and promise making, Amen