Verily

"Make your word, Yes, be Yes, and your No, be No; more than these come from the evil one," Matthew 5:37.

Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a red-hot needle in my eye ... I swear on a stack of Bibles ... On my mother's grave ... I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth ... God as my witness ... To be honest ... What drives the obligation to swear either by the sky or by the earth or by any other oath? A simple implication: until speaking those oathly swear words, anything said earlier has liability to lies, deception, falsehood. We want to mark off common, habitual, careless, mixed words from the moment ahead when uncommon, out-of-the-ordinary, careful, pure words are spoken. The need to mark off alloyed, unreliable speech to (presumably) dependable words comes from evil. The Word says, Just stop it. Make all your speech reliable.

We marvel: when Jesus said Verily, he emphasized (not contrasted) his habit; finally, a man spoke God's honest truth. He transforms common hearts. So today, with a brother or sister, we say thanks to the God whose words all find their Yes! in Christ. We bank on them.