The Plumbline

Those who learn from the lessons of life will join the others who are wise. Those who disregard discipline sabotage themselves, but those who are open to correction gain understanding. Reverence for the Eternal is the first lesson of wisdom, and humility always precedes honor. (Proverbs 15:31-33) "You were given this life because you were strong enough to live it." (Author Unknown) We don't receive lessons in this life through osmosis, but because we walk through them and learn from them. Someone might think they were given the life they were given because only THEY could live up to the challenge. The challenge wasn't given to you because you had the strength, it was given to you to reveal the strength the Almighty would give you to walk through it. We call it life and it comes at us at extraordinary speeds on occasion. The lessons of life will lure us in like a slow, lazy river gives us the sense all will be peaceful as we launch out only to find it takes us strai

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 be that we

Remember every road that God led you on for those forty years in the wilderness, pushing you to your limits, testing you so that he would know what you were made of, whether you would keep his commandments or not. He put you through hard times. He made you go hungry. Then he fed you with manna, something neither you nor your parents knew anything about, so you would learn that men and women don’t live by bread only; we live by every word that comes from God’s mouth. Your clothes didn’t wear out and your feet didn’t blister those forty years. You learned deep in your heart that God disciplines you in the same ways a father disciplines his child. (Deuteronomy 8: 2-5) Remembering means that we go through a process of thinking of something again and again. In the process, we bring our attention to something we want to be aware of - bringing what exists in the unconscious mind back into the conscious mind. I remember my first "solo" bike ride - but mostly because I have scars to