The Plumbline

Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.  (Matthew 6:34) The other day, mom asked me about my BFF's father - if he worried about her like she worries about me. If I don't make it home at a very specific time, she begins to imagine I am in a multiple car pile up and never coming home to her. She has always been one to imagine the worst - even when I was a small child. We used to joke that she worried over what there is to worry about! Worry is a very real thing - because we don't always know what the outcome will be. Would you say you actually know what God is doing in your life right here and now? Are you so consumed with worrying about what might happen sometime into the future that you are missing out on the here and now of God's tremendous love? Worry is a limiting device in our lives - it consume...

You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule. (Matthew 5:3) The idea of "being at the end of our ropes" as a blessed or happy place just doesn't compute for me! In fact, I'd probably argue that it is both frustrating and discouraging to be at a place that makes anyone feel so helpless and without hope. I might even describe the emotional state of such a place as pretty mixed up (kind of a muddle of emotions) and in a whirlwind of internal storms (because where emotions are not 'at rest', there is always a flood of more of those hormone that keep the body at high alert). How on earth does someone have a mindset of "being blessed" in the midst of that kind of unrest?  We aren't told outright in this passage, but we get a definite hint as to how Jesus gets an inroad into our lives. It is at the place where we come to the end of our ability, the end of our striving - the end of o...