Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7 "Merle, do you remember when Paul was in jail?" Pearl asked her husband as they began unloading plastic tubes from the hamster-house boxes. "Jail?!" Michael said. "Why are you bringing up jail?" "Relax," Pearl said. "Nobody's going to jail over a broken elephant table." "I dunno." Merle looked at them through a plastic tube. "People have gone for less." "True," Pearl said. "The apostle Paul was sent to jail for preaching." "Why would someone go to jail just for preaching?" Michael asked. "The Romans thought the Good News that Paul was sharing stirred up too much trouble," Merle answered.

"Paul was sent to jail several times," Pearl continued. "He did a lot of writing there. In one letter, Paul wrote to a church he helped to start in Ephesus." "Paul told the Ephesians— that's what they call people from Ephesus— about a great 'mystery'— because of Jesus, they were all now part of one big family," Merle added. "And he told them how important it is for a family to tell the truth to one another. Paul said, 'Stop telling lies. Let us tell our neighbors the truth, for we are all parts of the same body.'" "But I didn't lie," Michael insisted. "I just didn't tell Mom what happened." "That's the same thing as lying," Pearl said. "Telling the truth is about telling the whole story."

"Yep!" Merle nodded. "Not telling the whole story, exaggerating, cheating, not keeping your promises— all of that is being untruthful." Michael had never thought about lying that way. He'd always thought lying was just saying something that he knew wasn't true. It was news to him that you could also lie by not saying something. Pearl climbed up Michael's arm and sat on his shoulder. "When the people in God's family tell the truth to one another, it shows that we can count on one another, and it also shows people outside of our family the power of God's love in our lives!"