SCOUTING'S PLUMB LINE

(adapted from "The Scoutmaster's Minute")

Does anybody know what a plumb line is? (pause for answers)

Carpenters and masons use a plumb line to make sure their work is perfectly straight and vertical.

Supposing you were building a brick wall and you built it just by guesswork. Then I came along with a plumb line and laid it against your wall. Both of us could see the wall was crooked if the plumb line told us so. You might get mad about it and throw my plumb line as far as you could. But that wouldn't make the wall any straighter, would it?

In Scouting, we have another kind of plumb line, and in a way it shows us how straight we are. Scouting's plumb line is the Scout Oath and Law. They tell us how to build our lives straight and true.

When we don't follow the Oath and Law, we know it, don't we? If we've been untrustworthy, disloyal or unfriendly to someone, our plumb line - the Scout Law - is there in the back of our mind to remind us that we are not building our lives in a straight and true way. The Scout never lived who never once violated the Scout Oath and Law. But those pledges, our plumb line, should always be our guide.

After all, the Scout Oath and Law are just applications of the Law we should all strive to live by, day by day, the perfect law of liberty, God's Law. May the Lord help each of us to do a better job tomorrow than we have done today in keeping that perfect law of liberty, God's Law.

Last Revised 11/21/03

John D. McCarthy