The Plumbline

Truth be told, many of us don't ever want to 'grow up' - we want to live as 'children' our whole lives. It may be the result of thinking it will be a whole lot easier to just go through life naive, but that vantage point can get us into a whole lot of trouble. It might actually be a little selfishness on our part, no wanting to actually do the 'work' of growing up because it will mean we have to stop doing some things and start doing others. Regardless of the reason behind our 'foot dragging' as we approach our growth in a spiritual sense, the fact remains that we cannot continue as children forever! We need to grow up - putting into practice over and over again the things we have learned until they become second-nature to us. Today they have coined that term "adulting' - maybe what we should admit we haven't accomplished the true consistency we need in the tasks we consider to be 'mundane' in our spiritual walk. If we want to gr...

Try as I might, my gardening expeditions have produced very little fruit. I spent about three years in a row working the soil, creating flowerbeds, and then planting the vegetables of the season. My hopes were that one of those above ground beds would become a lush vegetable garden. My actual production resembled dead vines, undeveloped melons, and a tremendous harvest for the birds on my tomato plants! Did I harvest what I planted? Most would say, "No", but when you explore the work performed AFTER the planting was done, you'd change your answer!! I harvested dead, half-developed stuff, but not really much I could say was a strong 'yield' from the garden. It wasn't for lack of soil, water, or even earthworms. I'd have to say it was lack of something quite out of my control - the temperature of the sun! Sometimes we plan well, set out to execute the plan, and then we harvest very little because we could not control things totally out of our control. W...