What Is Your Plumb Line?

Karen

This is what he showed me: The Lord was standing by a wall that had been built true to plumb, with a plumb line in his hand.

—Amos 7:7

When our children were growing up, they knew my husband and I had certain expectations for them when it came to their behavior. We required them to address adults as ma’am or sir. We expected them to be on time for meetings and events. If we ever got a little pushback from one of our kids, questioning why they needed to behave a certain way, we always gave them the same answer: “Because you are an Ehman.”

God has expectations for us as His children as well, and He desires that we behave in keeping with what is outlined in His Word. The Old Testament prophet Amos wrote about these expectations, both those that God had for individuals and those He had for society at large.

In today’s verse, the prophet saw a vision of a plumb line. At the time, a plumb line was a thick cord weighted at one end with a lump of lead. It was held up to the top of a structure with the weighted end near the ground. As gravity pulled it downward, it made the cord straight. Then builders were able to check whether vertical structures were perfectly straight.

The image of a plumb line is used symbolically here to refer to the godly standard against which the Lord would measure the behavior of His people. He had found Israel and its leadership to be chronically crooked, so the nation would be judged harshly.

We can glean a few concepts for our lives—and our behavior—from the vivid account of this vision.

God has standards. Yet He hasn’t left us to fend for ourselves, trying to figure out how to live our lives here on earth. His Word is our plumb line, and in it we find instructions for living as well as cautions for what might happen when we disregard His directives.

Each of us has a response to His standards. We have a choice in life. We can decide to follow God and obey His commands, or we can scrap His standards and make up our own guidelines. Each choice has its own consequences.

Even when we choose wrongly, the Lord’s mercy triumphs over His judgment. God is prepared to grant mercy when we humbly ask for it. And His ultimate act of mercy was in sending Jesus, His only Son and the one true prophet, to offer us forgiveness and save us from eternity spent apart from Him.

Praise God for both His plumb line and His mercy when our behavior fails to measure up.

Father, may my only plumb line in life be Your holy Word. Help me study it, understand it, and be quick to obey its commands. In Jesus’ name, amen.

While God’s Word should be our ultimate plumb line, for many in our culture, this is not the case. What are some other things you’re tempted to measure yourself against to determine if you are successful in life?