The Plumbline

The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him. For he knows how weak we are; he remembers we are only dust. Our days on earth are like grass; like wildflowers, we bloom and die. The wind blows, and we are gone—as though we had never been here.  But the love of the Lord remains forever with those who fear him. (Psalm 103:13-17 NLT) My earthly father always believed in me and he showed it by his actions toward me. When I wanted to learn how to ride a bike, he encouraged me to go for it by getting out the training wheels and putting them on my sister's huge Schwinn two-wheeler. I say huge because anything bigger than 5 inch wheels on a tricycle was "HUGE" to me in those days! When I wanted to earn a little money like my older siblings were doing, he helped me pick the fruit from the citrus trees in our yard, pile it high into the wheelbarrow, and then make believe he wasn't watching me like a hawk from tw...

Did you ever stop to consider the way various people address God?  I have been around some pretty "staunchly" religious people who continually refer to him as "heavenly father" or "God Almighty".  Yes, he is both, but these terms actually describe a kind of formal and rigid relationship with God.  If I had gone around responding to my dad with "Yes, father" all the time, it would have been like I was saying, "Sir, yes, sir!"  I would have been treating him merely as an authority figure in my life much in the same way I treated my commanding officer in the military!  Indeed, God is the authority over my life, but I don't want to approach him as the "big authority in the sky" kind of God.  I think God intends for us to have a more intimate, or close relationship with him.  He doesn't want us to treat him like our "bestie", but I do think he wants us to be comfortable calling him "Abba" (daddy).  ...

I had the pleasure of enjoying my two daughters and grandsons on Mother's Day, along with my Mom.  The boys had to work, but they sent their greetings and were missed terribly.  As we were enjoying a leisurely BBQ lunch, Corbyn asked if I had seen the hummingbird video on Facebook.  We had been observing the hummingbirds come and go from the feeder just behind us on the patio, so the subject seemed to center around birds.  I had observed many beautiful birds on vacation, but the boys wanted me to see this particular video because it had caught their attention.  Becca was quick to find it in the news feed and shared it with me.  It spoke volumes to me.  As I watched, a mother hummingbird fed two small chick birds in the nest.  First one, then the other. What was amazing was the way she almost had to "force feed" them.  At first, they started out "ravenous" - wanting what she had to offer, beaks open and beckoning to her to give them her store...