Dr. Frederick Price wrote an article that appeared recently on Streaming Faith Devotional. He wrote about "integrity".

I’ve written here on the subject of integrity, but not at any great length. It’s a word we use a lot and often don’t stop to think through what such a powerful word as "integrity" really means. Even more than that, we seldom realize why it’s a word that fits those of us who are ‘chronologically maturing’ and have made the mental-emotional ’shift’ into the 2nd half of the journey.

I’ve always understood integrity to mean whole or wholeness. Webster’s New Collegiate defines it as "an unpaired condition" and the "quality or state of being complete or undivided" (completeness). In my book (excuse the pun) that translates into a state of being whole. In plain language, it’s "what you see is what you get"! Better said, it relates to who I am internally is who I am externally.

I’m true to ‘me’ and when you encounter me, you get ‘me’! Me with all my imperfections, areas of incompleteness as well as those aspects of ‘me’ that have made it! Are whole and together and in perfect unity!

Have you met such a person before? A person who is so genuine, so real, so transparent and honest that you instantly, instinctively know ‘them’ and expect complete honesty and openness out of them at all times!

I have! And what a joy when those folks cross the paths of our lives and bring meat and meaning that might otherwise never have been discovered.

What blows me away is an aspect of being the same internally as externally in the lives of those whose "integrity" does not lead to the betterment of those around them. The criminal who is criminal inside as well as outside. Paraphrasing something Jesus said about can’t get good fruit from a rotten tree!

I point this out because integrity has come to take on the positive aspect of being a ‘whole’ person without realizing that one can be true to one’s inner motivations as expressed externally and not be one who contributes to the common good.

A person of real integrity, as we’ve come to define it, is someone whose ethics and actions meet the highest societal standards for doing right and good, because she IS ethical at the core of her being!

I don’t think we begin to achieve a level of ‘integrity’ (becoming an integrated person) until we’ve come to a certain ‘age’ - whether it corresponds with crossing the ‘40' divide or transitioning across a mental-emotional divide that takes a different perspective on life!

It has been my experience and that of many women whose stories I’ve heard over the years, that integration out of which integrity is devised, needs time, patience and some life experiences - both positive and not-so-positive from our personal perspective. It takes emotionally and psychologically assessing those experiences; distilling their essence and meaning, before we can let go of what’s unnecessary and hone-up what is necessary and important if we are to be comfortable ‘in our own skin!’

It’s seems a good subject for a ‘Sunday Subjects’ conversation. The day of the week that most of us take time to express our faith in the venue in which we feel most comfortable. The stories that come to us from Scripture are all about men and women who moved from fragmented inner lives and messy outer lives to a wholeness and completeness that accomplished great things according to the purpose for which they were called. A purpose that demanded of them a sense of wholeness or completeness or ‘integrity’.

We rarely turn to the Word to find the true meaning and purpose of so much that is important in this life. We'll look in the dictionary to know what the definition is; but the essence of a word is found in the Word and without a handle on the essence, we get a watered-down understanding without grasping how to make it real for us here and now!

There's so much more to integrity and the pursuit thereof!