Weekly Devotion: Out of Line
Then the Lord said, “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel.
-Amos 7:8b
Take a string. Tie a rock to it.
You have just created a plumb line.
A plumb line is a simple device to measure how things line up. Gravity does all the work. From the top of a wall frame, for instance, a carpenter dangles the weighted string down to see if the wall is actually vertical.
Amos used this metaphor to describe God assessing how well the Israelites were lining up with God. In this case, they weren’t.
So how are you measuring up? Or maybe the better question is, how have you stepped out of line? We make such a question complicated, but for most of us, weighing out what’s right and wrong can be as self-evident as gravity. We just don’t like what we see.