Love Rejoices with the Truth

This Week's Story

Riding through Port au Prince with my friend Kimberly, I noticed little shops everywhere with "Bric-a-Brac" painted on the front, so I asked Patrick what they were.

"It's a porn shop."

"WHAT? Are you serious?"

"Yeah, what's wrong with that?"

Kimberly and I went from reasonably peaceful passengers to mutinous moralists in half a second. No money for food, gambling on every corner, and PORN SHOPS on every block?! Patrick — a man who loves God, faithful to his wife, church every week — just kept shrugging. "Why's it bad?" We yelled. He defended. We yelled louder. Who is this man's pastor?

Then it hit me like Babe Ruth's bat hit a baseball. Patrick grew up in Connecticut and didn't move back to Haiti until his twenties. He's the same guy who calls a vegetable patch a "gahdin."

He wasn't saying porn. He was saying PAWN. A Bric-a-Brac is a pawn shop.

Patrick was safe on first the whole time we had him out in left field. And there I was, with a half-truth in one hand and a verdict in the other, ready to convict a good man over a missing letter R. That's how it works, isn't it? We hear a piece of a story, fill in the worst, and pass it along. A lot of gossip is delighting in evil with sprinkles of envy on top. Love wants the whole story — the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. Love asks one more question before it picks up the gavel.

This Week, Day by Day

My Prayer This Week