The Plumbline

It is of no use to commit whole pages to memory, merely to recite them once without hesitation; you must think of the meaning more than the words - of the ideas more than the language. (Dorothea Dix) If I tried to recite all your wonderful deeds, I would never come to the end of them. You take no delight in sacrifices or offerings. Now that you have made me listen, I finally understand—you don’t require burnt offerings or sin offerings. Then I said, “Look, I have come. As is written about me in the Scriptures: I take joy in doing your will, my God, for your instructions are written on my heart.” (Psalm 40:5-8) I used to think I had to memorize all these verses in the Bible to be a Christian. I am not much of a memorizer, though. I can do it, but to simply recite these verses I have learned over the years is not really anything all that profound. In fact, they can be like 'clanging cymbals' or 'noisy gongs' if all I do is memorize them, but they don't really 'ge...

Pressure is the exertion of force upon a surface by something in contact with it. When we use the term, "I am under a lot of pressure right now", we are simply saying, "There are a whole lot of EXTERNAL influences in CONTACT with my life right now". Something, or someone, comes into CONTACT with our lives - but they are not "invading" our inner life - their contact is on the surface! This may not be earth-shattering to some, but I think if we really begin to latch onto this, we may just see how much control we have over what actually can affect us on the "inside". It is what we 'let in' that matters - not so much how much EXTERNAL pressure we are under. If you fail under pressure, your strength is too small. (Proverbs 24:10) What we allow into "contact" with our lives will exert some kind of force against us. Even air exerts some kind of "force" upon that which it surrounds! We cannot escape the fact that things ...