Proverbs 20:7
“God-loyal people, living honest lives,
make it much easier for their children.”
In 1927, a Georgia real estate and insurance company folded, short-changing 500 stockholders. The owner, a man called Mercer, was a person of integrity who vowed if possible to repay everyone every single penny. But despite his best efforts, his company never did make a comeback. After he died, his son remembered his father’s vow and 28 years later deposited a check in a Savannah bank to reimburse every last stockholder.
That young man was the successful singer/songwriter Johnny Mercer. One of the songs he wrote from which he earned the royalties to pay the stockholders back was “Accentuate the Positive.”
When you go, leave your children – both biological and spiritual – something more important than money to remember you by; leave them a legacy of integrity: “God-loyal people, living honest lives, make itmuch easier fr their children.”
The person who can’t be trusted on all counts can’t truly be trusted on any. Ethical principles are not flexible. A little white lie is still a lie, no matter what kind of excuses we make; theft is always theft, whether it’s one dollar or a million. Character is made in the small moments of our lives when no one is there to check up on us.
Sociologists suggest that people of poor character might have been different if they’d grown up in a better environment. Character is a choice. Our circumstances are no more responsible for our character than the mirror is for our looks. What we see only reflects what we are – and what we are is what we’ve spent our lives building.
And the choice of making Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior is the foundation on which to build character!
Related Text:
Matthew 7:24-27
