The Plumbline

Send your grain across the seas,   and in time, profits will flow back to you.   But divide your investments among many places,   for you do not know what risks might lie ahead.   (Ecclesiastes 11:1-2 NLT) Colin Powell said success was the result of preparation, hard work, but probably most important was this whole concept of learning from failure. We will "try" things and not do as well as we wanted to when we set things in motion with whatever that was supposed to turn out like in the end. We will "try" to make things better in relationship, only to find we still don't possess the "right stuff" we thought we needed - causing us to reach out beyond ourselves if we want things to go any further or get any better than what they are under our own "trial and error" steps. We will "try" to learn to play an instrument, but soon find it takes much more than learning the names of notes on the paper or the location of those notes on th...

I had a conversation with a person the other day who has retired and finds himself just a little "cooped up" in the house these days.  He isn't really that unique to some who have no specific "function" to perform once they retire. Many will recount how much they looked forward to retirement - hoping for lazy days, leisurely coffee in the mornings, and an occasional trip abroad to explore places on their "bucket list".  Then in almost the next breath, you will begin to hear this "hint" of remorse because retirement isn't working out as they planned.  Either they lost the one they hoped to spend all that time with, or they seem a little bit "lost" because they have more time on their hands than they counted on.  The truth is God made us to "work", not retire.  The first definition for "retire" in the dictionary usually refers to this process of "going away or apart", as in to withdraw.  It takes a co...

Be generous: Invest in acts of charity. Charity yields high returns.   Don't hoard your goods; spread them around.    Be a blessing to others. (Ecclesiastes 11:1-2 The Message) In the United States, this is the week of Thanksgiving.  We will gather around tables across our nation with friends and family this Thursday to celebrate the season of harvest that our forefathers began so many years ago in Plymouth.  The celebration of harvest was something to relish, as the hard work of the year was drawing to a close, and the land would soon lay at rest for while prior to the planting of the next crops.  We've lost that sense of celebrating harvest over the years as our country has become far more of a manufacturing country and a lot less of an agricultural country.  Yet, we continue the celebration without any real connection to its original meaning. In many ways, Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the season we call our "holiday" season.  Between ...