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This article originally appeared in the January 21, 1983 issue of Christianity Today.

Somewhere a father is telling himself, "I wish my daughter would pack up, leave home, and never come back; God knows she has driven us crazy." But he remembers a promise he made when she was baptized, and he sticks with her in hurting love.

Somewhere a woman is telling herself, "I want to get out of this marriage and start over with someone who really loves me; God knows the clod I married has given me reason for cashing him in." But she remembers a promise she made when she married him and she sticks with him in hopeful love.

Somewhere a minister is telling himself, "I want to chuck this job and get into something with a better payoff; God knows my congregation has given me second-degree burnout." But he remembers the promise he made when he was ordained, and he sticks with the church in pastoral love.

Some people still make promises and keep those they make. When they do, they help make life around them more stably human. Promise keeping is a powerful means of grace in a time when people hardly depend on each other to remember and live by their word.

Some people still have ships they will not abandon, even when the ship seems to be sinking.

Some people still have causes they will not desert, even though the cause seems lost.

Some people have loved ones they will not forsake, even though they are a pain in the neck.

But why? Why make any promises at all? And if you do make them, why keep them? Why not tune in to growth and change and the maximizing of your feelings? Why worry about a word once spoken, or about a memory that binds you to that word? Promise keeping may be a sucker's game: sticking with what you stuck yourself with. That may be the surest way to becoming a loser. When you can move on to maximal pleasure and profit, why not cut the cords and let others pick up the pieces? Why make a promise, and why keep the promises you made?

The answer to the nettlesome whys of promise making is this, to paraphrase Hannah Arendt (The Human Condition; U. of Chicago, 1958): the only way to overcome the unpredictability of your future is the power of promising. If forgiving is the only remedy for your painful past, promising is the only remedy for your uncertain future.

A human promise is an awesome reality. When a woman makes a promise, she thrusts her hand into the unpredictable circumstances of her tomorrow and creates an enclave of predictable reality. When a man makes a promise, he creates an island of certainty in a heaving ocean of uncertainty. Can any human act, other than the act of forgiving, be more divine?

Here is reason enough, then, to give some hard thought to the wonderworking power of promising. Maybe it is one lost key to the better society we all pray for.

I look at the mystery of human promising from three vistas: Human destiny is resting wholly on a promise; human freedom comes to its own only in a promise; and, human community can be saved only through the making and keeping of promises. Maybe, from these three vantage points (suggested to me by Paul Ford), we can rediscover a few dimensions of the wonderfully human event called a promise.

The future of the human family rides the fragile fibers of a promise spoken. One thing assures us that the cosmos will not climax its arduous odyssey turning itself into a stinking garbage heap. Only one thing affirms that the human romance will have a happy ending, and that the earth will be populated one day by a redeemed family living in justice and shalom. The one thread by rich everything hangs is a promise spoken and not forgotten.

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December (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46