The Plumbline

Parents everywhere are faced with the challenge of teaching their children manners as they grow up. Society sets expectations of how people should 'behave' when interacting with each other. The lessons vary from chewing with your mouth closed, elbows off the table, say 'please' and 'thank you'. Other lessons may be taught in some cultures - things like hold a door open for others, respect your elders, no back-talk, and the list goes on. When someone spoke to me, I was taught to answer them. When they gave me something, I was taught to thank them. Whenever someone thanked me, I was to tell them they were welcome. Simple manners - yet so much meaning behind them. First, when I was being spoken to, answering revealed just how well I had been listening. When someone gifted me with something, a simple thank you let the other person know I appreciated the gift. Whenever I let someone know they were welcome, I was showing I cared about them meeting a need. Welcom...

But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master. (Romans 6:23) Who tells you what to do? We probably all have persons in authority within our lives that give us tasks to complete and we go off in the direction of 'doing' whatever it is we are asked to do. Bosses are probably at the top of the list - they by nature of their position are guiding the work that gets done each day. If you are a child, parents are those individuals who remind the child of the bed needing to be made, teeth requiring a little scrubbing, and toilet paper that needs replacing when they use it all up. Traffic cops expect we will observe what they tell us to do, diverting this w...