vi/xii

p r o m i s e

Have you ever made a promise? An off-hand quick reaction, ‘yeah, I promise I’ll take the bins out’ or a more weighted guarantee between friends, ‘I promise I will keep this between us’.

We have an interchangeable relationship with promises. We can choose to view them as sacred – like a vow which stands the test of time or we use a promise as a quick measure of trust. For example, ‘I promise I won’t eat your advent chocolate Anna’. Yet, 10 minutes later, here we are and the advent chocolate has miraculously disappeared but the promise hasn’t. I wonder why we pick and choose when to value our promises and whether this impacts our trust when we are promised something.

The Christmas story begins with a promise. A young girl is told that she will have a baby and that He…