The Plumbline

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you. (Ralph Waldo Emerson) I expect and hope that I will not fail Christ in anything but that I will have the courage now, as always, to show the greatness of Christ in my life here on earth, whether I live or die. To me the only important thing about living is Christ, and dying would be profit for me. (Philippians 1:20-21) What lies within you if you are a Christ follower? Good things, indeed. How many of us really live with the knowledge that Christ is revealing his greatness through us? Most of the time we bemoan that we aren't living as we know we should be - focusing more on what lies behind and what lies in front of us. We are a bit weird that way, neglecting to live in the moment while we dwell on the past or get hyper-consumed by what is in our future. Christ asks us to settle down right here, where we are today, so he can reveal bits and pieces of himself to the world through our...

Really! There's no such thing as self-rescue, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. The cost of rescue is beyond our means, and even then it doesn't guarantee life forever, or insurance against the Black Hole. (Psalm 49:7-9) Simply put - pulling one's self up by your bootstraps means you are going to 'rescue' yourself - be a success on your own. I don't know how that works for you, but when I have tried it, I fall again! If you are into "self-rescue" - the constant exertion of effort to pull yourself out of the mess you find yourself in - you are likely to fall again because you won't stand very well on your own. Many of us try to deal with life by a series of "self-rescue" attempts - don't we? We simply cannot bring ourselves to admit we messed it up - let alone admit we need someone else to help us out of the mess! As my kids were growing up, they'd pull out all kinds of toys. The floor would be littered with building bloc...

At times, the most obvious thing seems to be the most elusive for us to grasp, huh? We think we can easily grasp something, but it seems to be harder than we imagined. We believe understand something fully only to find we don't really get it at all. Did you also realize that an older meaning of the word "obvious" is that thing that stands in your way? Sometimes the most 'obvious' things are the things that actually become the things that form some kind of obstacle for us.  “Don’t hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or—worse!—stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it’s safe from moth and rust and burglars. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being." ( Matthew 6:19-21 MSG ) There are those who report every obstacle is just a way to develop our abilities to achieve or overcome, but there are others who look at an obstacle and se...

Hey, dealing with others is just not easy! This should come as no surprise to any of us, but it needed to be said. We deny relationship woes like denying them somehow makes them any less real. These relationship woes grow and never go totally away until they are finally dealt with. Have you ever been so frustrated with someone, boiling over with all kinds of not so nice kinds of thought, or in some other world, just as long as it was not YOURS! Most of us would never consider murder as an option for dealing with someone we'd rather eliminate from our lives, though! So, why does God feel it is so important to tell us not to murder someone? “You must not murder." (Exodus 20:13) Society classifies murder into two buckets - premeditated (deliberate and planned) and without premeditation (more of an accidental thing in the commission of another crime such as speeding and causing an accident). Without getting too deep here, God really does not approve of the loss of life at the ...

Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies. (Eli Wiesel) Indifference is really a condition of the heart and mind in which a person has determined that they have very little interest or concern for something or someone. Another term we use to describe this condition that is quite similar to indifference is the term "mediocrity". There are some very telling telltale signs that someone is pretty much indifferent, or that they have "settled" for a position of mediocrity in their lives. An indifferent individual might be apathetic to the needs in their own life or those of another who may be right there in their path. They may be calm, exhibiting a very cool indifference in the face of what would cause uneasiness or apprehension in others. It could be they possess a seeming absence of emotional connection with others or circumstances around them - removed as it were from the influence the circumstances might normally have on an individual. Apathy is a d...