The Plumbline

Quit your worship charades. I can’t stand your trivial religious games: Monthly conferences, weekly Sabbaths, special meetings— meetings, meetings, meetings—I can’t stand one more! Meetings for this, meetings for that. I hate them! You’ve worn me out! I’m sick of your religion, religion, religion, while you go right on sinning. When you put on your next prayer-performance, I’ll be looking the other way. No matter how long or loud or often you pray, I’ll not be listening. And do you know why? Because you’ve been tearing people to pieces, and your hands are bloody. Go home and wash up. Clean up your act. Sweep your lives clean of your evil doings so I don’t have to look at them any longer. Say no to wrong. Learn to do good. Work for justice. Help the down-and-out. Stand up for the homeless. Go to bat for the defenseless. (Isaiah 1:16-17) Charades is a game in which you have to act out titles to songs, movies, or events. The team has to guess what you are trying to act out in a limited...

Pretentious people don't really get the most out of life. They are so busy putting up the 'pretense' they don't really get much time to enjoy what is really happening all around them! We cannot forget the importance of living genuinely - showing our "real colors" vs. living with a "facade" in place.  The tragedy of not living a life that always puts on a show or keeps up a certain image is that others only see only a pretense of happiness.  Too many times, it is easy to hide behind what we want to portray to the world vs. being our real selves.  This is because we interpret our 'real' selves as unworthy of public display, not of value - so we create a facade to hide behind.  This is a very dangerous place to be - live there long enough and you will become less and less familiar with what exists behind the facade! A pretentious, showy life is an empty life;  a  plain and simple life is a full life. (Proverbs 13:7) God wants us to realize a...

As a kid I played this game called "charades".  It is a game in which you cannot speak, but have to act out titles to songs, movies, etc.  The other team members have to guess what you are trying to act out in a limited amount of time.  If you are successful in your "acting", your team is able to guess the name of the movie or song.  If not, the other team has a chance to "steal" the points by answering themselves.  We could get into some rip-roaring times with this game - laughing up a storm with some of the silly ways people tried to act out things like "Gone With The Wind", or "White Christmas".  Charades is a fun game, but when we begin to live life like it was a game of charades, we are simply giving a "pretense" of living one way, while we are really living quite another.  As kids, we'd "pretend" to be soldiers, parents, cops, and even robbers.  We'd act out our imagination's creation.  It was a fu...