Keeping Promises

Sometimes, being faithful to a promise doesn’t necessarily end up looking the way you think it will look. That’s what happened that first Sunday on Pentecost. In the movie Forrest Gump, Forrest becomes friends with fellow soldier Bubba while they serve in Vietnam. They make plans to start a shrimp business after the war. However, Bubba doesn’t survive the war. Despite knowing nothing about the shrimp-boat business and culturally being very different from the boating community, Forrest buys a boat after the war. Narrating the scene of traveling south, Forrest explains it simply: “I’d made a promise to Bubba, and I always try to keep my promise” (directed by Robert Zemeckis, distributed by Paramount Pictures, 1994): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuaI-7iLR-0. He then reveals that he is spending all of his money to start this shrimp-boat business. This is reminiscent of God, who always keeps his promises, and spent the costly sum of his Son’s life to fulfill his promise to redeem his people so that “whoever calls on the name of the Lord might be saved” (Acts 2:21).