The Plumbline

Ever eat your words? I have and they don't taste too good sometimes! A meal of my words sometimes consists of a plateful of complaining, a side dish of fretful words, and a handful of impractical advice. We all have those moments when our words don't actually match up to our intentions, don't we? They just kind of tumble out without our even noticing they did - all because we weren't paying attention. Did you realize that was one factor in communication? Paying attention is probably the biggest factor in communicating our thoughts in such a way that they not only make sense, but so they are spoken in kindness, with a degree of intellect, and in a manner than actually helps build the relationship instead of tearing it down! A person eats well when he speaks wisely - but if we forget to engage our minds in the process of speaking, we will likely only dine on some pretty nasty stuff. A person eats well when he speaks wisely, but the treacherous crave violence. Those wh...

When baseball was just starting out as a national pastime, the pitching was a whole lot different than it is today.  You'd hear the announcer say over the crackly loud speaker system, "Here comes the wind-up..." In a few quick moves, the pitcher would go through various "contortions" until there was a sudden release of the ball, sending it sailing toward home plate. It was the "wind-up" that gave the ball its speed. Without the wind-up, the ball was not likely to cross the plate, but if it did - the batter was more likely to hit it dead on, sending it as far as his swing would allow.  The beginning of a quarrel in terms of this 'game of life' we play every day is something like the "wind-up" of the "pitch" that will send the entire conversation into a direction it may never have intended to go! Learning to control the "pitch" often determines if the 'argument' ball will ever reach home plate! The start of...