Levelling Your Spirit

Today we had some new blinds installed in our house. The very first thing that the installer did was to hold a spirit level around the architraves of each window. Most of the windows were fine, but one was significantly out of square and the blind needed some adjustment to fit the space.

We don’t think about it often but standards are involved in everything we do. In fact they make the modern world possible.

Imagine if the manufacturers of phones each had their own frequency and the network operators had their own ideas. Everybody in Australia would be forced to use the same phone, which would be less convenient than having a choice of products all following the same standards and protocols.

If oil companies were able to deliver any old fuel to the service station, we wouldn’t know for sure that our model of car was compatible with the fuel. Our cars would not function correctly and might even be severely damaged.

Even in agriculture, one of the oldest and more stable industries, grain and other products have to meet a certain standard or the price paid by customers is greatly reduced.

When it comes to the way we live, we think there shouldn't be any standards. We feel we should be free to do exactly what we want when we want. We don’t want anybody setting standards for us.

Just like the phone manufacturers have to agree with the networks about standards in order to make our phones work well, our mindsets and relationships need standards that allow us to run our lives effectively.

The creator of all things has provided us with a book that doesn’t just set the standards, but gives us illustrations of how things go wrong when we ignore the standards.

We are living in an age where we are pretty much free to live our lives how we see fit. We set our own rules. We are also living in a time of unprecedented levels of relationship breakdowns, anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses.

This might be a good time to check out what the Bible says about our lifestyle choices, and bring that spirit level to see if we can make better choices.