The Plumbline

Keep on loving each other as brothers and sisters. Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for some who have done this have entertained angels without realizing it! Remember those in prison, as if you were there yourself. Remember also those being mistreated, as if you felt their pain in your own bodies. (Hebrews 13:1-3) Keep on...the call for the new year. It is not a time to sit back and just watch...it is a time to rise up and take action. Love each other...as brothers and sisters. No family is perfect. No relationship is always without stress or strain. We must work at loving one another as Christ loves us. Three missions for the new year:  Show hospitality to strangers. Give comfort, provide meals, present gifts, and lend them help. The Latin word “hospes” means “visitor”, so we are to look after and care for them. How can we make someone's life a little more comfortable? What act can we perform that will minister to their need? Remember the prisoner. This doesn't a

Every now and again I run across an 'old school' preacher who will blurt out, "God is good", expecting the response, "All the time", from those he or she is around. It was frequently used as the 'affirmation' of our trust in his goodness and grace that we were expressing back in the day. We don't hear it very much in our local churches these days, but it is a good thing to remember - our God IS good. He isn't 'becoming' good - he IS good. He isn't enticed to 'do good' - he IS good. The state of 'IS' really means in the present tense, at this very time, without any hesitation, or without any concern that something exists - he IS good. The Eternal One is good, a safe shelter in times of trouble. He cares for those who search for protection in Him. (Nahum 1:7) Three short things we can learn from what our writer shares here today. First, God is good - even when we doubt his goodness, he never ceases to be good.

Have you ever lost one of your children in a large mall, or at the park? I have and I can describe for you the moment of sheer panic when I realized they were gone - not just from my sight, but gone! They had disappeared quicker than I was able to appreciate and that moment of panic gripped my soul, sent my emotions into a spiral, and began to play scenes of terror across the screen of my imagination. I wonder what it would be like to see our 'separation' from God through is eyes...would we begin to see the extreme scenes of terror that cross his screen, as well? I think God has things in control, unlike us, but he is certainly deeply affected by any separation between us! So who can separate us? What can come between us and the love of God’s Anointed? Can troubles, hardships, persecution, hunger, poverty, danger, or even death? The answer is, absolutely nothing. But no matter what comes, we will always taste victory through Him who loved us. Romans 8:35,37 Before I go

"Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It is the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too." (Frederick Buechner)  Whose 'skin' have you been living in this week? I know a good many individuals who never 'get out of' their own skin long enough to realize what it is like living in someone else's skin. Their days are filled with 'me', 'me', 'me' - leaving little room for any other concern a brother or sister may be enduring. It is a truly sad existence to never get out of one's skin! Compassion isn't given any other way. The genuineness of one's caring is really not 'felt' by the other person until the 'compassion connection' is really made. It’s criminal to ignore a neighbor in need, but compassion for the poor—what a blessing! (Proverbs 14:21) The ot

"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy." I like how the Message interprets this passage as 'at the moment you are "care-full" - you find yourselves cared for'. There is a saying in both scripture and common day that reminds us we reap what we sow. There is a direct link between us sowing seeds of "care" and reaping a reward of being cared for. As many of you have discovered over the years of following this blog, I am in the role of a caregiver - mom having come to live with me about 11 years ago. It has been a lot harder than I imagined at times, but it has equally been as rewarding! There are lots of ways we sow into the lives of others - not just to receive something in return - but because we sense how blessed we really are when we begin to reach out to sow into the lives of another. It might not seem like we'd receive much blessing in the 'toil' of sowing, but remember that the farmer only receives the crop because

All growth begins with a solid 'planting'. It is Fall in Arizona, which means those of us with Bermuda grass all summer are scalping it low, sowing loads and loads of Rye seed, and awaiting the beauty of that bright green to emerge once again. Yes, we Arizonans are silly enough to want 'year-round' grass! The 'sowing' of the seed is on top of the existing grass, making it necessary to scalp that Bermuda lawn down very, very low. This method sometimes involves people putting either steer manure over top of the Rye seed, or a topsoil for grass, but not all of us do that. Some of us just sow and hope the birds won't scavenge every last seed! When the milder days begin to produce the subtle warmth to produce the growth, the blades of Rye will emerge through, having 'taken root' where they were sown. They weren't exactly 'planted', but it is sown where it can make good contact with the soil, in hopes it will take root. All it takes is contact

For promotion and power come from nowhere on earth, but only from God. He promotes one and deposes another. (Psalm 75:6-7 TLB) A lot of us think we got where we are today by some progressive achievement of skill, talent, and hard work. The real fact of the matter is that God promotes and he is the one quite capable of holding us back from promotion on occasion, as well! If you have ever been "passed over" for some important task, or perhaps that 'next step' on the corporate ladder, you might have felt a little slighted, or like you 'deserved it'. You get a little ruffled, especially when you see someone get the position that you absolutely know you had greater skill to perform the tasks or a greater familiarity with the work being done. There are just times we don't understand the choices some will make to promote one over another, or how some seem to avoid crisis after crisis while you muddle through. One thing I have learned to trust over the years is

I raise my eyes toward the mountains.   Where will my help come from? 2  My help comes from the  Lord ,   the maker of heaven and earth. 3  God won’t let your foot slip.   Your protector won’t fall asleep on the job. 4  No! Israel’s protector   never sleeps or rests! 5  The  Lord  is your protector;   the  Lord  is your shade right beside you. 6  The sun won’t strike you during the day;   neither will the moon at night. 7  The  Lord  will protect you from all evil;   God will protect your very life. 8  The  Lord  will protect you on your journeys— whether going or coming—      from now until forever from now.  (Psalm 121 CEB) I once read something by a poet about closing one's eyes at night and all seems to become "dead" with the enclosure of darkness, but also of the tremendous miracle of opening one's eyes the next day to the newness of life where all seems to once again be reborn. It was kind of an amazing thought to consider our times of s

To care for something is more than just giving it a little attention now and again. I came home yesterday to find a beautiful husky just sitting on the curb outside my home.  At first I didn't know if she was friendly or going to be kind of stand-offish with me.  After pulling into the garage and seeing she didn't run away, I asked her to come over and to my surprise, she did!  She immediately cowered down, rolled over and let me give her a few good rubs, scratches, and a little ear jostling.  No tags, just a collar.  Someone obviously claimed her as a pet, but were they caring for her all that well?  Not at the moment! She was free to roam and now I had to decide where she needed to roam back to!  It didn't take me long to identify an open gate at a neighbor's home, recall they had two dogs, and then equate the open gate with the escaped dog.  What did take a while was getting them to open the door to actually tell them their dog was roaming the neighborhood!  Once th

"Sometimes when you're in a dark place, you think you have been buried, but actually you've been planted."  (Positive Hits PER on Facebook)   I saw this on the Facebook feed this past week and just wanted to take a moment to give that one a little thought.  My BFF said something similar the other day when she said, "Sometimes we pray for the rain to come, then we complain bitterly when it starts to storm."   She definitely nailed that one on the head, didn't she?  There are times we want so badly for things to change because it seems like the worst possible place we could be in, but then all of a sudden something comes a long to show us we weren't in all that bad of a place to begin with!  The darkest places in our lives are not to be dreaded or overlooked for their significance - for they may just be the place transition and growth occurs! Those planted in the house of the Eternal will thrive in the courts of our God.  (Psalm 92:13 VOICE) T

Do you take for granted things like the consistency of the sunrise or the predictability of the phases of the moon?  Most of us probably do unless we make our living predicting something based on their predictability.  If we were to stop for just a couple of minutes and consider what the scriptures declare about the sun and moon, we might just be amazed all over again at the next sunrise, sunset, and the phases of the moon!  Why?  They are simply doing what they were designed to do - to keep telling the wonders of God and declaring boldly what he has done!  They declare his creative power and his ability to sustain all things with nothing more than the sound of his voice!  This should give us cause to pause for just a few moments to consider his greatness and to bask in his brilliance! The heavens keep telling  the wonders of God,  and the skies declare  what he has done.    Each day informs  the following day;  each night announces  to the next.    They don’t speak a word,  and t

I don't fully understand the "watchful" ability of God - because at best I can only keep my eye on a couple things at one time - and even then I am just barely keeping up with things.  Don't believe me, then recount the last time you were cutting up something on the counter, while a pot was coming to a boil on the stove, and the sudden alertness it created when you heard that sound of the hot water hitting the stove top with a loud sizzle.  You were right there, and it stilled boiled over!  You were "watchful" over the entire dinner, but it stilled managed to escape your attention that the pot's contents were at the point of coming right over the edges of the pot!  Yes, we are watchful, but our watchfulness is nothing like the omnipresence of God - his ever-present, all-seeing watchful presence.  I don't just believe it is his vantage point in the heavenlies which gives him the great ability to be watchful over all mankind at one time.  I think it m

  7 "You're blessed when you care. At the moment of being 'care-full,' you find yourselves cared for." (Matthew 5:7 - The Message Bible) 17-18 Real wisdom, God's wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor. (James 3:17-18) Some translations will state this verse as "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy."  I like how the Message interprets this - at the moment you are "care-full" - you find yourselves cared for.  There is a saying that we reap what we sow.  This is so true.  Sow seeds of "care" and you will always reap a reward of being cared for. When we are &qu

6-7 Don't run roughshod over the concerns of your brothers and sisters. Their concerns are God's concerns, and he will take care of them. We've warned you about this before. God hasn't invited us into a disorderly, unkempt life but into something holy and beautiful—as beautiful on the inside as the outside. (I Thessalonians 4:6-7) There are times in our day-to-day "plodding" through life that we overlook the needs of others, show ourselves insensitive to their plight in life, or are just plain oblivious to the heartache of our neighbors because we are just way too caught up in our own lives.  Sometimes our "overlooking" of the other's need is not intentional, but a product of the "busy-ness" of our day that results in us not being very open to seeing what is creating huge pain for another.  There are other times, though, when we are quite aware that another is in pain and we simply don't want to invest the time, energy, or "he