March 18

Amos 7:8

And the Lord said to me, "Amos, what do you see?" I answered, "A plumb line." And the Lord replied, "I will test my people with this plumb line, I will no longer ignore all their sins."

Okay, after reading this I got to thinking, what is a plumb line? I thought it was something else and am glad that I looked it up. After seeing the definition "a line from which a weight is suspended to determine verticality or debth - this is where my thoughts went.

Why was the Lord holding up this line? He was holding this plumb line up next to a wall to see if it measured up and was built correctily. He found out that is was not, and He then compares His people to the wall. The people also do not line up to the "plumb line" that Jesus is holding up.

Lets think about this. Even today we are still His people - and so often we fail to measure up to this line that is held up. This line has an anchor - His name it Jesus. This line is straight and is a guide - Could be God or maybe the Bible. In our lives we have a tendancy to do our own thing, make our own decisions and not look at our "plumb line" to see if we are going in the right direction. We should really think about how we look standing next to the "plumb line" that Jesus is holding up. Do we see a bulging side or a dip in our wall where we have not taken time to smooth out and let God fix it for us? Sure we do. So take that time, ask God to reveal to you what areas need to be fixed in your life, and let Him be the master carpenter in your life and help get your wall straight again.

We also must remember His words "I will no longer ignore their sins". He didn't ignore them, He died for them. He died for them so that we can have eternal life with Him. Thank Him for being that "plumb line" in our life that we can hold up and compare to, and when we don't measure up, don't hesitate to let God know that we are sorry and we are in need of some standing in our lives to get the rough edges off!