The Plumbline

Your unfailing love is better than life itself; how I praise you! I will praise you as long as I live, lifting up my hands to you in prayer. You satisfy me more than the richest feast. I will praise you with songs of joy. (Psalm 63:3-6) When you aren't 'dealt' the hand you expected, how do you respond? To be honest with you, I don't always immediately praise God for the 'lousy hand'. Sometimes I gripe about it, chafe against it, and get a little too 'me' focused right there in the midst of the 'hardship' I am enduring. "Me" comes first and "me" is not feeling like it is getting the 'best shake' in the moment, so "me" begins to resist and complain. Been there? Got the shirt and wore it out? Good! Sometimes our life is even turned upside down by the 'hand' we receive - what was up is now down, and the ground underneath us is quite shaky. When we 'receive' that 'hand', we might just fo...

O God, you are my God; I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you; my whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in your sanctuary and gazed upon your power and glory. Your unfailing love is better than life itself; how I praise you! (Psalm 63:1-3) Growing up in the Arizona desert, I have walked many a dry wash, climbed over huge boulders, and been pricked by more than my share of cacti. It is dry, filled with all kinds of dangers, and barely livable in many parts. Water is not easily found, nor is it readily available if you were to drill for it. Many places have to truck it in right to this day. You can be so 'dry' in the desert that you actually crave water. It doesn't seem all that fertile, does it? What seems like the most 'unfertile' ground in our lives may actually be the place where the greatest growth occurs. Something you may not realize is how many 'distractions' are removed when yo...

I am the  Lord , who opened a way through the waters, making a dry path through the sea. “But forget all that— it is nothing compared to what I am going to do. For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.  ( Isaiah 43:16, 18-19   NLT ) Many times God is preparing a way, not through the overwhelming waters, but through the wilderness - the driest and most challenging of journeys we may face, but one with preparations for our safety all along the way. The word of promise to us is simply: Forget all that - it is nothing compared to what I am going to do!  I don't think many of us have seen waters back up on themselves as though an invisible dam halted their powerful flow, nor do I think many of us have stopped to consider just how God was able to dry up that riverbed floor so quickly! We might have seen just how quickly we could stop our ve...

Finally - in the end, after considerable delay, at last.  We probably all have those "finally" moments in life, when we have been dinking around with something for so long in our lives and then as if we either could not stand it any longer, or the urge was too great, we proceed in the course we have been avoiding.  Avoidance is a tremendous deterrent to actually getting a matter accomplished!  We all have those deterrents, don't we?  The matter was too daunting for the energies we had left, so we rest a while.  The matter was too hard for the intelligence we possessed, so we "research" it for a while.  The matter made us just a little too uncomfortable, so we wait until we can have a change of heart toward it. When we reach the point of "finally", there is usually something good which will come from taking the first steps toward obedient action and if we are careful, maybe even a learning or two from the "delay". Finally we did as the Et...

If you have ever studied the life of Moses, you will find he was a man who was not afraid to speak his mind with God.  He was "real" with God - sharing both his frustrations and his exultation.  He never minced his words - he shot straight from the hip. I think God probably honored this kind of openness and transparency and blessed his leadership of Israel as a result.  There are times when we get so frustrated with the length of time it takes to get ourselves from step "A" to step "B" in this process we call "restoration" or "transformation", right?  I wonder what God would do if we were so totally humble and honest with him like Moses was?  Maybe we would come to see the delay is really a part of the process - it is a time when we purify our emotions, see our thought patterns change, and get rid of a whole lot of dead wood in our lives.  I kind of like the words below, because they express the frustration of Moses' heart.  The pe...

Have you ever really considered the lessons you have learned because of the experience of another?  You know, the stuff you just never really explore because you see how the exploration of another left them kind of unfulfilled, reasonably sane, but just so not excited about their experience?  Well, I think this is all part of God's plan for us in life - to learn from the experiences of those who go before us.  The first astronaut into space paved the way for all the others who came behind.  The first one to fly above the earth had a whole lot of failures before there was truly lift-off.  The experiences of the first made an example of both what not to do and what to do in the midst of the experiences of the many who followed.  I think the same is true in our spiritual lives - we learn a great deal about what not to do and what really is the best path for us simply by looking at those who've gone before us. When  God , your God, ushers you into the la...

1  God—you're my God! I can't get enough of you! I've worked up such hunger and thirst for God, traveling across dry and weary deserts.  2-4  So here I am in the place of worship, eyes open,  drinking in your strength and glory.  In your generous love I am really living at last!  My lips brim praises like fountains.     I bless you every time I take a breath; my arms wave like banners of praise to you.  (Psalm 62:1-5) In today's mad rush to find fame and fortune, we often miss out on the things in life that really give us the most satisfaction.  I was talking with a friend this week about how one of her friends was asked why she never had children.  The answer was, "We just got so busy that we forgot to have them."  Career, interests, making a living - each presented a distraction that kept the couple from realizing the passage of time. Look at David's words that we are considering today.  He fin...