The Plumbline

Sin will take you farther than you ever wanted to go, keep you longer than you ever wanted to stay, and cost you more than you ever wanted to pay. (Anonymous) “You can enter God’s Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it. (Matthew 7:13-14) It's easy to travel the broad road, enjoying the pleasures all along the way. It's the most popular road: lots of people are on it. The real problem is where the road ends. The beginning may not seem 'all that bad', but the end is where we find much regret, sadness, and 'spoiled lives'. Whatever enticed us down that wide road may not ever be worth the challenge we face when we finally realize the destination! Farther than you ever wanted to go. Can that describe some 'journey' you may have taken in life? It can describe more than one for me! What...

I have one gate on my yard fence and it is just big enough for us to pull our over-sized trash cans in and out on trash day, get the mower through from the back to the front, and bring in the fresh plantings in the wheelbarrow.  It isn't as wide as my neighbor's which can open big enough to navigate a camping trailer through.  Both gates are functional and both provide an element of security and privacy.  Yet, I am quite limited in what I can send through my gate compared to my neighbor.  On another note - I have no desire to park a camper in my backyard, so I don't really need all that wide of a gate anyway!  As we go through life, we will find some pretty "wide" spaces we get through without much effort, while other areas of life are seemingly "managed" by very narrow passages.  Those "narrower" spaces seem a little harder to find and a lot harder to get through - but what is on the other side is often quite rewarding.  A long time ago I rem...