Week 6: Plumbline

Plumbline: noun. “A plumb line is a weight suspended from a string used as a vertical reference line to ensure a structure is centered” (definition from Commentary: Biblical Plumbline Still a Relevant Biblical Allegory, in The Daily Pilot, by Lauren Keane)

Amos 7:7-8

7 Then he showed me another vision. I saw the Lord standing beside a wall that had been built using a plumb line. He was using a plumb line to see if it was still straight. 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.”

A friend of mine described this week as “heart surgery” — I cannot come up with a better description. I knew heading into this week the topic was “plumbline”, but it didn’t really mean anything to me; I had no idea what was in store! And it was good — so good — but oh-so-hard. One of the things we repeatedly tell our kids is how valuable it is to “do hard things.” And as parents, we do hard things all the time… But I have to say, there was a depth to the hard things last week…

One of our exercises last week was to write a letter to God our Father — that was our simple assignment (ha!). The Lord took me back to a season of my life where I needed to make some things right with Him and a couple of other close people in my life. There’s that old saying “let bygones be bygones”, but I don’t think the Lord likes things left undone in our lives. He wants to redeem our mistakes and brokenness. But if we just tuck those things away, and never set things right, we bind up His ability to use our story — really the story of His redemption. Redemption is for broken people. And I’m going to tell you now, I’m broken. I have made some big mistakes; there’s literally a season of my life that I’d like a redo, please. But that is not how it works. No redos. Just honesty and confession and repentance, and healing!

And there was a second half of the assignment… that was to let the Lord speak into what was written to Him, and write a letter back to ourselves. I do want to share with you what the Lord spoke to me.

“Dear Amy, I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. Nothing changes that. And I see you. I’ve always seen. You are forgiven. You are free. You’re not wierd. I’ve been gracious and compassionate. And I continue to be. Always ask me first what my thoughts are about…everything.

Keep talking to me… and listening to me. I have things I want to show you. And I want you to be reminded often of my great love for you, no matter what you may feel from others. I love you.” {Insert sobbing emoji}

Y’all. God loves you so much. I’m totally undone by that truth…

A note on outreach — in my excitement to announce our foreign outreach, I failed to mention another aspect. After we return from Brazil, we will be spending another two weeks on a stateside outreach — likely Houston, but not set in stone….yet. After those two weeks, we have a week of debriefing here on base, and then we graduate (11/16)!