The Plumbline

Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ, and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in. (C. S. Lewis) We all have those moments when we are thinking about what WE want. We get lonely and desire the closeness of another. We feel anger over things that bug us and want revenge. We have messed things up so badly and see no way out, but desire it so greatly. We find ourselves in the pit and want a ladder to climb our way out. We look all around for any other answer, but we know the one and only answer to each of these issues is Christ Jesus. We seek answers, but we don't go to the one who knows the answer ever before we pose the question. I love to do God’s will so far as my new nature is concerned; but there is something else deep within me, in my lower nature, that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. In my mind I want ...

 Someone once said they didn't know all the answers, but they enjoyed taking on the questions. I am kind of like that individual. I like the questions - they challenge my mind. I like to see what will come out of pondering an idea - if it will 'fly' or fail doesn't really matter - I just like exploring the idea until I can see it fully. It doesn't escape my attention that each child comes into this world with a 'blank slate' of a mind and before long that mind is exploring all matters of immediate interest. You remember those days if you are a parent - those endless minutes of question after question that seemed so unnecessary - but oh how necessary they were to that little one! As a parent, we might have been a little frustrated by the endless questions, interrupting our 'workflow' and challenging us with slightly odd things like why goats poop nuggets and horses poop 'clods'. Yup, those questions may not make a whole lot of sense, but it wa...

42  It is the same way with the resurrection of the dead. Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever.   43  Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory. They are buried in weakness, but they will be raised in strength.   44  They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies. For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies.  (I Corinthians 15:42-44 NLT) Do you ever hold back asking a question because you fear someone may ask you why you ask such "dumb" questions? When I conduct team meetings in which we have to look at the design of our work, or perhaps even redesign something that no longer produces the results we need to see, I ask the team members to not be afraid to ask questions. These questions are often those that will clarify an objective, get at the root of a system issue we must address before we can move on...

"Suppose" can be used as the setting up of an argument, or a belief or theory, as though you were prepared to defend it to the hilt.  Have you ever had one of those moments in time where you want to disprove someone and set up the arguments for your position with the statement, "Suppose that..."?  I think we all have at one time or another, because it is human nature to present what we believe or have perceived to see if it is really trustworthy.  In doing this, we present our side of the argument, then we await the rebuttal.  For example, we start our study of the earth with the statement, "Suppose that the earth is round, how do we keep from falling off as it rotates?"  The statement set forth is the perceived or believed fact, followed by the supposition or question.  We already are holding the truth to be true that the earth is round - now we just want to understand why we don't go flying off into space when it rotates on its axis!  Ofte...