September 1, 2006
Gravitas
Plumb lines are the simplest of tools for harnessing a phenomenon so mysterious and so complicated that even the most brilliant astrophysicists are yet to understand it.
We call it gravity. Earth life would be even graver without it. Space cadets, professional basketball players, and ballet dancers seem simply to ignore it and just float.
Aristotle said it’s why stuff falls, and then went on to something more interesting. Newton devised a formula and measured it. Einstein in one of his major league moments thought it caused by something like a curved-space ball. The quantum folk imagine itsy-bitsy gravitons charging all about in its service, but they’ve yet to catch one.
A plumb line is literally a string with a hunk of lead (plumbum) or some other heavy object tied to one end. Used properly, it keeps things on the straight and level. Just take hold of the loose end and let the whole thing dangle until it’s still. When it stops, you’re more or less in touch with the center of the earth and on the upright.
God took it for a remarkable metaphor and liked it so much he used it for show and tell with Amos who claimed not to be an engineer but a tree surgeon and that he had no idea what to do with it, but ended up doing it, anyway (Amos 7.7-15).
Lasers have pretty well replaced plumb lines these days, so the metaphor may be lost on this quantum generation. But the church, enamored as it often is with past matters of gravity and sometimes even mystery, must surely remember. For God has not forgot. That same old plumb line yet swings ever so gently and purposefully.