Sunday Devotion

By Gina Holmes


Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. John 8:32

Have you ever asked someone for the truth, expecting to hear one thing, but getting something entirely different? Something you didn’t much care for?

Of course you have. I have. Who hasn’t? For me it was asking a boy if he loved me as much as I loved him. “Sorry,” was his response. Two weeks of lamenting was mine. Would I have been better off had I not asked? Of course not. I would have simply wasted time being deceived by my own romantic fantasies.

A lawyer friend once told me never to ask a question I don’t already know the answer to. That’s probably great advice for a trial attorney, but horrible advice for the writer.

If we only ask the questions we know the answers to, what is gained? What of truth do we discover?

Whether we’re novelists, magazine freelancers, poets or greeting card writers, it's our job to find the truth, expose and record it. We don’t have to like or understand it, (though isn’t it wonderful when we do?)

Writing half-truths, facades of what things ought to be, or what we wished they were—we were—is not our calling as scribes. It is not our calling as truth-seekers.

The truth will set you free. God promises it. Let's write it.