The Plumbline

But as for me, I will sing about your power. Each morning I will sing with joy about your unfailing love. For you have been my refuge, a place of safety when I am in distress. (Psalm 59:16) Where do you turn when you are in distress? Do you veg out in front of the TV, streaming this or that in the hopes you can take your mind off whatever is causing all the stress? Do you head to the fridge or scour the cupboards to find another snack? Do you go online to buy one more thing you really won't use all that much? What we do in our times of stress and where it is we turn when we need to 'destress' is very important for us to recognize. It could show us just how much we depend upon what 'we' can do rather than what God wants to do. Things will always be there that give us great pain, anxiety, or sorrow. It is part of life to deal with this kind of stuff. The acute physical or mental anguish the stressful thing causes isn't meant to be dealt with on our own, though. W...

For we are the product of His hand, heaven’s poetry etched on lives, created in the Anointed, Jesus, to accomplish the good works God arranged long ago.  (Ephesians 2:10 VOICE) Gandhi said, "My life is my message."  Nothing can be truer than that statement except maybe, "My life, with Christ lived through it, is my message."  Our passage refers to it as "heaven's poetry etched on our lives".  Grace isn't just something we "get" - it is something we see affecting our lives, changing our testimony, and actually turning our lives into a message from God's hand itself.  An author doesn't set out to "just write" - he has a message in mind as he begins the task of creating the masterpiece he will one day finish.  I imagine God to be quite the same as an author - a mindset for what the end result will be, creating scenes all along the way, orchestrating the "building of the story", until we see the climax of it al...