The Plumbline

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm. (Robert Louis Stevenson) I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else. And we’ve been shown the mystery! (Colossians 2:2-4) Woven into a tapestry of love - not through human effort, but because God binds us together as 'interwoven members'. This should give us a sense of 'belonging' even when we don't feel like we 'belong' anywhere else. This should also give us a sense of being created for a purpose, not just to sit idly by as life passes us by. We are called to work together - not just the physical work some might think of, but that 'spiritual' and 'emotional' work of bei...

" The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it. " (William James) It was Mr. James who also reminded us that one can alter our life by altering our attitude. Attitude can range from pretty positive to absolutely negative and everything in between. We can be consistent until our attitude gets a little tweaked over something and then we just let things go awry. We can commit when we are soaring high, but as soon as things get tough, our attitude toward our commitments can turn pretty negative. Amazingly, attitude can determine what we spend our time doing - what we invest ourselves in the most. If we are use our life well, we are to spend it on something that will yield good results and our attitude can go a long, long way in helping us to realize that goal. Don’t brashly announce what you’re going to do tomorrow; you don’t know the first thing about tomorrow. (Proverbs 27:1) Maybe we have been going through life thinking we will always have a tom...

  5-9 So don't lose a minute in building on what you've been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can't see what's right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books. (2 Peter 1:5-9) Peter employs the words "alert discipline" as the third characteristic of a disciple of Christ.  To our strong moral foundation (created by allowing the Lord to remodel our basis for how we interpret moral or good choices) and our developing spiritual discernment, we are to add alert discipline.  Usually, we think of discipline in one of two ways: 1) ...