Graduation has come and has gone for Desert Mountain High School.  Tyler is no longer a high school student but is preparing for entering his freshman year at Whitworth University in Spokane Washington.  Carter finished his junior year at Desert Mountain and is waiting for his final year to follow in the steps of his brother and four siblings that went before  him.

Carter and I had an interesting conversation the other day as he was chosen by the departing seniors in charge of the wolf den (or cheer team or pep team as we used to call them) for all the athletic teams at Desert Mountain starting fall 2014.  Carter was chosen to lead this team for his senior year, but the team had a problem.  The past leaders had collected money for things they sold to the Desert Mountain students and had pocketed the money in their own bank accounts.  This action lead the principal of the senior class to call the IRS to investigate the fraud that was going on for this school group.

Carter was concerned and decided to meet with the principal to talk about what could be done to re-establish trust for the wolf den as they prepared to cheer on the teams for the coming year.  You see, there was no accountability and no trustworthiness built in the past leaders and Carter wanted to right a very damaged ship from the past.

It reminds me of the passage I read this morning in II Kings12:1-15.  It is a story of King Joash who had been selected to become king of Judah and was in charge of rebuilding the temple.  He appointed priests to collect the money given by individuals who in turn were to give it to people who would then give it to the workers.  The problem arose when Joash realized that the temple wasn’t getting built because no money was being given to those who were to give it to the workers.  He stepped in and told the priests to stop collecting money but to do what he told them to do.

The passage that caught my attention was verse 15 which said, “They (those who were to give it to the workers) did not require an accounting from those to whom they gave the money to pay the workers, because they acted with complete honesty.”  They acted with complete honesty.  What a testimony to a true character quality.  COMPLETE HONESTY.  When we are totally honest, we don’t need to be accountable because everything that we do is according to what we say we are going to do.  It’s what the New Testament writer says when he communicates the phrase, “Let your yes be yes and your no be no.”  These workers were people of their word.  What would happen in our relationships or our work if we were people of our word and lived with the phrase “complete honesty” tattooed  on our daily lifestyle.

On this journey we have the privilege of changing certain characteristics in our lives and working on building new characteristics into our lives.  Complete honesty is a good one to take on.