We are all witnesses, all day long. To our own lives. To the people around us. To the street outside our window, the faces on the screen, the small and large moments passing by. We see. We notice. We take it in.

But there is something deeper, and more crucial, that happens when we bear witness.

To witness is to see.

It happens to us. We are there, and our eyes take it in. We saw it. Then we moved on.

To bear witness is to carry the truth.

The word bear means to hold up, to carry something. When we bear witness, we see what happened, we hold it, and when it matters, we tell it. Accurately. Honestly. With integrity.

Witnessing can seem passive. Bearing witness is a more committed, vital choice.

Think of a courtroom. Someone saw a car accident, a robbery, a person being harmed. Many people may have been standing there. But the one who takes the stand and tells the truth, carefully, without adding or leaving out, without bending it to please anyone, is the one who bears witness. Justice depends on that person. So does the person who was hurt.

That’s why the old commandment warns against bearing false witness. The words carry weight. Truth carries weight.

We bear witness to joy, too. When a friend gets the promotion they worked years for, or a colleague wins an award, bearing witness is saying, I know what this took. It’s remembering the late nights and the doubts. It’s telling their story truthfully, the whole journey, not just the finish line.

And we bear witness in hard times. We sit with someone who is grieving. We stand beside a friend who is struggling. We don’t look away, and we don’t pretend it didn’t happen.

In every case, bearing witness says the same thing: I saw. It mattered. I will tell the truth about it.

I think of the people who bore witness to my life. The teacher who saw something in me before I saw it myself. The friends who celebrated my wins and stayed with me when things fell apart. They didn’t just notice me. They carried part of my story, and they told it true.

Life gives us plenty to witness every day.

The question is: What truth will we choose to carry?

Thanks – Michael (he, him)

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This matters too – What We Do With Truth.

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