The Plumbline

If you have ever laid awake at night just ruminating over the state of something which really bugged you that day, or made you a little concerned, you know what it is like to be robbed of a good night's sleep!  It might be the steady little drip you hear up in the attic, not really sure where it is coming from, but you know you have some type of problem with the roof.  You could be rehearsing recent conversations with a peer which really didn't go as planned, dreading the next time you encounter them because you know it will have caused a little bit of a wrinkle in your relationship.  Or maybe you are just adding up the bills and trying hard to figure out how to make ends meet in a really "tight" month.  It doesn't make any difference what robs us of our sleep, it is the fact we are robbed in the first place which we need to focus on.  You see, when we allow those things we cannot control to ruin our peace, we are being robbed.  We are being "violated" ...

There are definitely times when we need to just tell someone how "boxed in" we are feeling at the moment.  It could be pressures from work piling up uncontrollably around us, or the bills of a few unexpected expenses which are now coming due, but regardless of the cause of the "boxed in" feelings, there is not much joy in them.  In fact, they are probably eliciting some fear, that little bit of anxiety mixed with frustration, and can even be creating undue physical pressures within our bodies which we now have to "manage", as well.  The scriptures are filled with examples of people feeling "boxed in", ranging from an entire nation of Israelites standing before the Red Sea with a vast amount of enemy forces closing in on them in hot pursuit, to the feelings of being alone and abandoned in a foreign country as a couple of widowed foreigners. Regardless of the cause, our sense of being "boxed in" can be overwhelming to us on occasion - el...

You've heard the old adage, "The best laid plans of mice and men..." - but do you know the rest of the adage?  It actually says, "The best laid plans of mice and men go awry."  No matter how carefully we plan, something can always go wrong with our plans.  This is human nature.  Yet, we are planners, aren't we? When we go to bed at night, we are thinking about what the new day will hold, complete with our mental "lists" of all we need to accomplish. Some of us are actual "list makers", having all manner of post-its and agendas at our disposal to organize the vast number of planned things we must accomplish.  It took me some time to realize the real reason for my list making was just so I wouldn't forget to accomplish something!  I thought making lists was just part of life - as I had seen other successful people do it for ages.  Yet, I didn't really know why I was making all those lists until one day I discovered it was just beca...