Loyalty

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If you have ever experienced betrayal, you know how excruciating it is. Jesus came to experience all of life. In that experience, as in every experience of our lives, Jesus has led the way, so that we will know how to handle betrayal when it happens.

Therefore, He had to be made like His brethren in all things,
so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest
in things pertaining to God,
to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
Hebrews 2:17

Although He was a Son,
He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.
Hebrews 5:8

One of the hardest things about betrayal is that it feels so unfair. Betrayal is unfair. When I experience something unfair, I try to remember what I have shared with you before: the ultimate unfair experience was Jesus on the cross. Knowing exactly how unfair feels is one of the ways He became “like His brethren in all things.”

He knows how it feels and He showed us what to do:

. . . while being reviled, He did not revile in return;
while suffering, He uttered no threats,
but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously;
and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross,
so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness;
for by His wounds you were healed.
1 Peter 2:23-24

In the midst of this heavy subject, I want to interject a silly little story that illustrates loyalty, which is the opposite of betrayal. It is the funniest example of loyalty I ever remember witnessing. I saw it on local television.

Not long after we moved back home to Tennessee in 1993, we watched the local county fair Fairest of the Fair beauty contest on our local public television station. As the announcer introduced each girl, he read her answers to questions she had been given ahead of time, questions such as “What is your favorite football team?” and “What is your favorite food?”

Most of the girls had given typical answers to that last question, answers like pizza and hamburgers. One girl’s last name was Stephens (not her real last name). Even as newbies in town, I had already heard the name of her family’s business. When it came time for the announcer to tell her favorite food, he read, “Produce.” Yes, you guessed it. Her family’s business was Stephens Produce.

Florida Potatoes at City Market, Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada

I don’t know who put her up to that (and it certainly wasn’t the only way she could have been loyal to her family), but I loved it. After almost 25 years, Ray and I have never forgotten it. Loyalty is a beautiful characteristic of a person. We don’t control what other people do, but we can control what we do. And we can teach our children exactly what loyalty looks like.

He has told you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justice, to love kindness,
And to walk humbly with your God?
Micah 6:8

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