The Plumbline

Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30 NLT) Far too many times, we carry burdens beyond our capacity to carry, wearing out under their load. I am now well into my sixth decade on this earth and sometimes think I can still 'carry' what I did when I was in my second decade. The results are quite different now than they were then! I get winded, my back aches, and it takes me about a week to fully recover from such 'load bearing'. The things we carry in our emotions may not give us a backache, leave us winded, but they can definitely put a 'load' upon our bodies and minds that we weren't really created to carry. Those emotional burdens are like a weight that gets us into a place where we see an...

No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us. (I Corinthians 2:11-12) A person's heart is a treasury of dreams and imagination, but it is also a harborer of doubts, fears, and failures, isn't it? We might hold onto certain dreams, hoping for their fulfillment, all the while investing a great deal of our heart's energy and attention into seeing those dreams through to fruition. We also hold onto certain failures, hurts, and habits that our heart seems to wrap much emotional energy around that could be spent pursuing better things. God knows what is contained within our hearts - the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly. Isn't it a wise choice to ask him to sort out what is in our heart, revealing what should be kept and nurtured, while letting go of what only resu...

A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's. (Richard Whately) Forget about the wrong things people do to you. Don’t try to get even. Love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. (Leviticus 19:18) Most of us can easily recall the last meal we prepared or purchased for ourselves. Many can recount the nice gifts they received on their birthday or anniversary. Others will bring to memory the nice things said about them at a celebration in their honor. How many of us can remember the last 'bad thing' done to us or said about us? God tells us to forget about the wrong things people do to us, but for some reason we hold onto those memories quite easily.  We might want to let go of whatever it is that has been 'done wrong' against us, but whenever we try to let go, we find ourselves drifting backward into our memory of the emotions attached to that 'event'. Maybe the amount of emotion attached to the event plays a par...

Do what God’s teaching says; when you only listen and do nothing, you are fooling yourselves.  Those who hear God’s teaching and do nothing are like people who look at themselves in a mirror.  They see their faces and then go away and quickly forget what they looked like.  But the truly happy people are those who carefully study God’s perfect law that makes people free, and they continue to study it. They do not forget what they heard, but they obey what God’s teaching says. Those who do this will be made happy. (James 1:22-25) How many times did you have to be told something as a kid? Mom would ask me to do something, and I might not want to do it, but if I didn't act upon it the first time she asked, there was no asking a second time! Some of you know exactly what I mean. Obedience was expected, the first time, without hesitation. Is it to be any different with God? There are times he asks for us to do something very specifically, but we hesitate. Why is that? It could ...