This week's Theme: Foundations
Day 1: True to Plumb
It was after a thunderstorm that we first noticed the crack in one of the concrete walls in the living room. It was the realization of my mother’s worst fears.
She had not wanted the craftsman my dad recommended for the job of remodeling our home. She fought a long and exhausting battle against his choice, but in the end, my dad had his way, and chose Ben Whal as the builder.
His name was not really Ben Whal—it was his nickname. At least, that’s what it sounded like phonetically, but the nickname had nothing to do with a first name Ben, or a last name Whal. It was simply local dialect for bent wall. Yes, this builder’s reputation had been firmly attached to his identity by the community.
My father was not the least bit fazed. His “friendship” with Ben Whal was firmly planted in common dissipation, liberally watered from bottles labelled 150-proof. And so our house joined the unhappy list of structures with the signature Ben Whal.
Of course, it isn’t just houses that require structural integrity. Safety, stability, functionality, and durability—the key elements of structural integrity—are important for just about every possible type of construction, simple or elaborate.
Ships, bridges, roads, cars, planes, spacecraft, farming and mechanical equipment, water and electricity delivery systems—all these and the millions of other organizational and physical pieces of our world’s infrastructure—depend on structural integrity.
But structural integrity is essential not just in the physical realm. Scripture has much to say about God's flawless standard of righteousness and justice, often represented by a plumb line. The prophet Amos describes the symbolism God assigned to His people and the standards He had established for them:
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. And the Lord asked me, “What do you see, Amos?” “A plumb line,” I replied. Then the Lord said, “Look, I am setting a plumb line among My people Israel...”
The Scripture uses a wall as a metaphor for the people of God—a wall that had been built true to plumb (Amos 7:7) i.e., using a plumbline. The plumbline in Scripture is a tool used by experts in the building trade to ensure that a structure has perfect vertical alignment—that it is straight, level, constant, and true.
The plumbline both established and assessed alignment, and in the discourse with Amos, God's evaluation of the standards of His people was metaphorically described as setting a plumb line among [them] (Amos 7:8).
The solid foundation established by God guarantees structural integrity: So this is what the Sovereign Lord says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who relies on it will never be stricken with panic (Isaiah 28:16). But Amos reported that the people aligned themselves with bent, crooked walls of idolatry, empty religion, social injustice and oppression, complacency, pride, and self-indulgence (Amos Chapters 5-6).
In the end, they experienced consequences that reliance on any other than God always brings—the type of results described by the prophet Isaiah: "...this sin will become for you like a high wall, cracked and bulging, that collapses suddenly, in an instant. It will break in pieces like pottery, shattered so mercilessly that among its pieces not a fragment will be found for taking coals from a hearth or scooping water out of a cistern” (Isaiah 30:13-14).
Just as in Amos' day, the people of God today rely, to a large extent, on the structures of the world. But we too, must remember there is only one firm foundation: For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 3:11). Like Abraham we are looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God (Hebrews 11:10).
We would be foolish builders indeed (Matthew 7:26-27) to place our faith in, befriend, endorse, and defend the Ben Whals of this life. For the rumbling thunder has already shown us, not just cracks, but giant fissures in the structures all around us, and it won't be long before the high, cracked, and bulging walls built on the shifting sands of this world collapse into fine shards and dust.
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