The Plumbline

12 Lord, great blessings belong to those you discipline, to those you teach from your law. 13 You help them stay calm when trouble comes.   You will help them until the wicked are put in their graves. 14 The Lord will not leave his people. He will not leave them without help. 15 Justice will return and bring fairness.   And those who want to do right will be there to see it. (Psalm 94:12-15 ERV) Willa Cather reminds us, "There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm." God's care for those he loves outweighs any storm we endure, my friend. Troubles come, but God is the calming effect in the midst of even the stormiest of turmoil around us. We have a great deal of stress in our lives, but did you ever take inventory of some of that stress only to find it was "self-caused"? Some of the greatest stress we face is that which we bring upon ourselves! In those moments when I have realized it is "me" causing all that trouble and chaos in...

13  “You can enter true life only through the narrow gate. The gate to hell is very wide, and there is plenty of room on the road that leads there. Many people go that way.   14  But the gate that opens the way to true life is narrow. And the road that leads there is hard to follow. Only a few people find it. (Matthew 7:13-14 ERV) It was the late C.S. Lewis who reminded us, "The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts." The road doesn't need signposts because it is the easiest to follow! If you have ever had a roof leak, you know just how doggone difficult it can be to actually determine where that water is getting in. Why? The water takes the course of the least resistance and travels along until it finds a path of escape, often quite far removed from the initial point of entry. The road to hell is much like that - we realize our need for escape at a point, but it is ofte...