Minutes of Meetings with God and with Myself
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The Plumbline ...

I thought earlier in the week that I pretty much knew what the contents of these "minutes" would be. My wife (Santa Claus?!?) brought me a little hand-held, voice activated tape recorder for Christmas. My other little recorder had broken and it was nice to once again have a device that I could slip into my pocket ... and use (if I remembered ) it to make recorded notes to myself. I had recorded notes to myself for these "minutes". The notes were about the meanings of "New Year" and about the journey of the "Magi" in search of Jesus ... I thought it was all good stuff. But then I ran into Amos, again. Not Famous Amos, the guy that makes cookies, but the Biblical prophet Amos. As I did my daily Bible devotions this week, I found myself reading Amos. Way back in seminary, one of my professors had warned me that the writings of this particular prophet had a way of "throwing a monkey wrench" into things. The professor pointed out that Amos is drastic ... unrelenting. Amos was a prophet who had a knack for not "pulling any punches". He was a shepherd; he was a person who lived rather plainly and simply; and, he heard the voice of God with a deeply cutting clarity. Unlike many other prophets, Amos did not take money ... he didn't make a living off of prophecy ... money didn't matter much to him. Amos was a prophet of doom ... but not because he was cynical or pessimistic. It was just that Amos wasn't fooled because people and things around him looked good ... he somehow knew in the depths of himself that looks can be terribly deceiving. Reaching deeply into his life and experience, Amos drew plain pictures to show how things really were. One of the pictures that Amos used was the plumb line. The plumb line ... the simple, straight-forward tool that human kind has used for thousands of years to determine whether a wall or a vertical edge is "true" ... The plumb line is a pretty precise gauge, a gauge that is hard to fool ... and it's pretty reliable ... after all, it was used to build the pyramids in Egypt and South America, the Taj Mahal, the Roman aqueducts and other things that have lasted a long time. A plumb line comes in handy even in our hi-tech world. Why, I've used one ... not to build a pyramid or anything ... to help me put up wall paper. The walls in our house look pretty "true", but when I used the plumb line to get a good straight edge to start our wall paper, I found out that the walls really weren't very "true" at all. The walls "lied". It took some considerable adjusting of the wall paper pattern (and a near divorce ... or was it a near murder) to make the wall paper (and the wall) look good. Amos said to the people of his day: "God is coming, and he has a plumb line in his hand ... and he will determine whether you are "true" or whether you merely appear to be "true". Amos wasn't a very popular prophet because he candidly told people that he was certain that God's plumb line would show them that they were nothing but crooked walls that looked good. Amos told people that God wants people to not only "look" true, but to"be" true. And about the only way to "true" a crooked wall is to tear that wall down and totally rebuild it.  That is what Amos said God would do. It was really severe stuff that Amos dished out. Amos "threw a monkey wrench" into the lives of the people of his time ... and he "threw a monkey wrench" into my thinking and into these "minutes". As I read Amos, I began to ask myself: in my approach to the New Year, am I going to live my life so that I am "true" (we're not talking flawless, perfect, or "laser" straight ... just solid and "true")? Or will I spend the year hanging wall paper to merely look good? Next, I began to think about God's plumb line. I know what my plumb line is like ... a string with a "bob" on it (a friend of mine machined a fancy one for me). What is God's plumb line like? I found myself asking that question over and over again. What is God's plumb line like? In what seemed like a revelation (my wife kids me about my revelations ...), I began to change the question to: "Who is God's plumb line? The answer to that one is Jesus. Jesus is God's plumb line ... the gauge by which we are measured for "trueness". It all brought me back to the troublesome, challenging question: "How can I be more like Jesus as I live my life?" "How can I... be more like ... Jesus? Oops! Someone just came in the door ... now I'll have to ....