Plumbline Certainty

Remembering… At school ‘Oily’ Wakefield taught us chemistry, introducing us to Bunsen burners, test tubes and practical experiments. He taught us the chemical symbols for the elements – ‘H’ for hydrogen, ‘O’ for oxygen… Pb for lead.

‘The Latin for lead is ‘plumbum’’, he explained – hence ‘pb’. He made some joke about ‘plump bum’… which, as teenagers, we found amusing, because Oily was a man of ample proportions.

Reading… 2 Kings… starting with Elijah carried to heaven in chariots of fire – for faithfully following his God… ending with a nation carried to a foreign land as slaves for not following their God. Between the two good kings follow God, bad kings don’t… Ahab’s the worst.

God speaks through his prophets about ‘…the plumb-line used against the house of Ahab…’ (21:13)

The plumbline… Oily’s plumbum… the lump of lead on a piece of string that always hangs vertically… The plumbline’s a Biblical metaphor for a certain, reliable, upright God and his standards. Plumbline certainty.

Reflecting… Yesterday in church Lou talked about Thomas. The other disciples had seen the resurrected Jesus; Thomas hadn’t. He wanted plumbline certainty that Jesus was alive.

Lou told of the American John Kavanaugh going to work with Mother Teresa. He asked her to pray for him, for clarity about what he should do with his life.

She refused: ‘Clarity is the last thing you are clinging to and must let go of.’  Kavanaugh commented on Mother Teresa’s apparent clarity. She replied, ‘I have never had clarity; what I have always had is trust. I will pray that you trust God.’

Reading… Oswald Chambers: ‘Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, we do not know what a day may bring forth. This is generally said with a sigh of sadness; it should be rather an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God.’

Plumbline certainty.