A couple weeks back we taught the Kindergarteners from Acts 5, Annanias and Sapphira. The curriculum went off in the direction of generosity, but we couldn’t really do that. The two of them had lied.

I don’t remember the specific incident that took place in my grade school class, but to my mind, it was so horrible that I absolutely could not go to school the next day. Was it a threat from a schoolmate? A test I wasn’t ready for? I don’t remember, but I was convinced that It must not happen. I prayed that I would wake up sick.

In the morning, I convinced myself that my prayer was answered.

“I feel sick,” I said to my mom.

She had a full-time job. My older brother was the only other sibling in the house, but he was a letter carrier and had left for work hours before. My dad was gone. It was just me and her. I had no idea the stress my being sick caused my mom. I didn’t care. I was focused on not going to school.

My mom put her hand on my forehead. She held it there. “You don’t feel like you have a fever,” she said. I remember thinking she didn't sound too sure about that.

She paused, touched my forehead again, left the room and returned with the thermometer. She shook it and checked the mercury to be sure it was down where it needed to be, then put it in my mouth, under my tongue. Mom left me there on the couch and went into the other room to continue getting ready for work.

As soon as she left the room, I took the thermometer out of my mouth and peered at it. You had to turn it just right to read and I couldn’t do it, but I knew that thermometer had to go higher than normal.

I glanced at the lamp by the couch. Well, was I going to try it or not? No, I shouldn’t, but soon it would be time to go. Quickly, the thermometer touched the lightbulb. I wasn’t sure how long to hold it there. I took it off and tried again to read it. No luck. I put it back on the light snd heard her coming. I didn't want to burn my tongue, but hearing her footsteps, the thermometer jumped back in my mouth.

Mom took the thermometer out of my mouth. She looked at it, looked at me, felt my forehead, then said, “You can’t go to school today. You need to stay home and get better.”

Phew. What a relief.

She figured out my lunch and made sure I was comfortable on the couch in the living room in front of the television. I lied there, my head on the pillow she brought and allowed her to drape a blanket over me.

“Don’t answer the door if anyone comes. Call me on the phone if you need anything. Your brother will be home first.”

“I know,” I answered, convincing myself that I must really be sick, my voice slightly trembling.

She kissed me goodbye and headed off to work.

The morning went well. I watched TV shows I usually only saw on holidays. Lunch was canned chicken soup with saltines and an orange. Even at that age, I could boil water, so there was tea with sugar, which was what I always drank when I felt sick or cold or sometimes just because.

But as the afternoon came, gameshows were replaced by soap operas. I wasn’t interested, so I turned off the television. I started to think about what I had done.

My brother came home. He had things he wanted to watch on television, so I went to my room. I had a book to read, but it wasn’t any good trying to read my way into someplace else.

Whatever it was that I avoided at school that day was still going to be there the day after, and now I had to face it with the added layer that I lied to my mom and would have schoolwork to make up. It would have been over if I had gone to school, but I did feel sick. I kept trying to convince myself, but it was not the kind of sick that had anything to do with staying home from school to get better. The kind of sick that couldn’t be healed with soup and rest. I had lied to my mom. Lying was wrong. I was wrong.

This was worse than whatever I was trying to avoid at school. The bad thing wasn’t at school. It stayed home with me. There was no escape. When you pretend to be sick and aren’t really, there’s no way to get better on your own.

I prayed. I asked Jesus to forgive me.

My bedroom was in the back of the house right by the driveway, so I could hear the car pull in and mom open the car door. A few seconds later I heard her unlock the back door and step into the back entry, then into the kitchen.

She came to my room. “How are you feeling?” she asked.

“Better,” I said, lying again. “Mom…”

“What?”

“I didn’t really have a fever.”

“I know.”

“You did?”

“That thermometer was so hot you would have been dead or in the hospital, and I certainly would have been able to feel a fever that high.”

“But you let me stay home.”

“I figured if you wanted to stay home that bad, you shouldn’t go to school.” She hugged me. “But don’t ever do that again.”

I hugged her back. “I won’t,” I said. She asked me what I had done to get the thermometer so hot. I told her. Someone had told me about the light bulb trick at school.

I never did that again.

Would she have let me stay home if I had told her why I didn’t want to go? Possibly. And I would have had a much better afternoon. Long forgotten was the potential incident that made me want to stay home—but, here I am now all these decades later remembering the bad choice I made.

Whatever I feared at school was not as bad as what I did at home to avoid it. There is no pulling the wool over the eyes of God. Like my mother on that day, the Lord Jesus already knows.

Annanias and Saphirra lied to Peter to make them look better than they really were. I lied to my mom to make myself look worse than I was. God is not fooled either way. Lies are childish things. Grace and truth are the medicines that makes us get better.

For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. John 1:16, 17