The Plumbline

Some people refuse to bend when someone corrects them. Eventually they will break, and there will be no one to repair the damage. (Proverbs 29:1) I became a good typist pretty quickly while in high school and this was probably because dad had an old manual typewriter I could practice on at home. Yet, no matter how "good" I became, I made mistakes which required correction. Not only because of key-strike errors, but in my posture! I remember my teacher coming up behind me, putting her fingers between my shoulder blades and poking me. Why? I was supposed to have excellent posture - somehow making me type with proficiency and speed! I was frequently corrected on keeping both feet on the ground while typing - as though the stability this gave would keep the typewriter and me firmly planted on good old terra-firma! Despite all the correction I received in my three years of office machine classes, guess how my feet are today. You got it - crossed, lazily slung under the desk -...

Correct a worthless bragger, and all you will get are insults and injuries. Any bragger you correct will only hate you. But if you correct someone who has common sense, you will be loved. If you have good sense, instruction will help you to have even better sense. And if you live right, education will help you to know even more. (Proverbs 9:7-9) We definitely benefit from correction when it is embraced and does the work it was intended to do, but it is not always pleasant or easily embraced. Did it ever occur to you that God is giving us a chance to prove we have actually learned from our mistakes? We need to view correction as a means of learning from mistakes - not as a punishment or some form of "penalty" for what it is we have done. The truth is we make a sufficient number of mistakes each day - if it were not for the ability to "correct" those mistakes along the way, I don't think many relationships would have lasted, nor would progress have been made i...

Life Hack #13: Don’t be afraid to correct your young ones; a spanking won’t kill them. A good spanking, in fact, might save them from something worse than death. (Proverbs 23:13-14) Children need correction in their formative years, and this is probably one of the hottest debated topics among parents today. There is a principle being taught in the scripture which goes beyond the "means" or "method" of discipline used to correct the child to the "heart" behind all discipline rendered by a parent. Discipline is for the correction of behavior which will lead the child into harmful stuff if ignored - and when rendered with the heart and compassion of a loving parent, it should always be within the boundaries of what does not bring more "harm" to the child. God's lessons are sometimes hard for me to learn, I don't know about you. When I am not getting them, he sometimes has to resort to what brings me to a place of paying attention. A parent...

" Christlike communications are expressions of affection and not anger, truth and not fabrication, compassion and not contention, respect and not ridicule, counsel and not criticism, correction and not condemnation. They are spoken with clarity and not with confusion. They may be tender or they may be tough, but they must always be tempered ." (L. Lionel Kendrick) Very good instruction from Mr. Kendrick, is it not? I think he was not only reminding us of the necessity of correction, but of the equal necessity of kindness and grace in the midst of it! If you love learning, you love the discipline that goes with it— how shortsighted to refuse correction! (Proverbs 12:1) I have a mind that works almost all the time - finding myself awake in the night hours mulling over ideas, creating "fixes" to something that is need of my attention at work or at home, or even working out the solution to a word puzzle that has been 'holding me captive'. I have had friends ask...