Living Stones

"As you come to him, the living Stone, rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him, you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Chris. For in Scripture it says:

'See I lay a stone in Zion,

a chosen and precious cornerstone,

and the one who trusts in him 

will never be put to shame.'

Now to you who believe, this stone is precious...You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:4-10)

What a strange and peculiar concept, to be a living stone. There are times that I read verses like these and I wonder what such imagery could really have to do with me. I mean, what does it really mean to be a "living stone". How could anything, being by definition inanimate, without life, be living? It seems a bit oxymoronic to me. Here are some observations I have compiled in the catalogue of my mind about stones: 

1) While stones themselves are not living and have little purpose on their own, together stones comprise things in which life dwells, things that encourage and support the survival of human beings and society. They form apartments, arenas, government buildings, houses, walls, streets, monuments. Essentially life lives within the community of stones, the cooperation of stones, each serving their purpose, fitting into their place, and joining together to be a part of something bigger. As each stone takes its place upon the foundation, fitting themselves to the cornerstone they create a place for life to dwell. Life is in the community. Life is in the building, the temple, if you will. 

2) Stones cane be molded. Though they appear unchangeable and firmly established, they can be altered, can be chipped away at, can be transformed. Take sculptures for example. All sculptures began as mere blocks of stone, plain, simple, lacking any beauty, and definitely absent of life. But have you ever spent time really looking at a sculpture? When I was in Italy I stood before one of the most famous sculptures in the world, the David. I can tell you one thing for sure. That sculpture was not stone, it was life. No one looks at a sculpture like that one and sees a stone. They look at a sculpture and they see life, they see art, they see emotion, passion, and movement. The thing that amazed me most about the David was his eyes. People always say that you can see into a person's soul through their eyes and that is exactly what I felt like when I looked into David's. I know, it is just a sculpture, but in its eyes was captured the very emotion of the moment it was carved to represent. Those eyes had life. The important thing to note though is that a stone only becomes a sculpture when the creator has chiseled away all the useless and excess parts of stone. Only after the sculptor has spent hours, days, months, sometimes years carefully making life out of death, movement out of stiff solidity, form out of rigidity. A stone only has life in regards to its sculptor, its creator. A block of stone is simply that, but once the hands a creator, a sculptor, painstakingly makes his marks upon it, life is breathed into it and it become a representation of a beauty that is not its own. It is a reflection of the one who created it. It in itself is nothing. 

3) Stones are only useful in the construction of something if they are molded and fitted to the cornerstone. Stones do not determine the shape of the cornerstone, the foundation, they are fit to it. 

So what does this all mean? Well, I can only say what significance it has to me. We, as living stones, were created to be part of something larger than ourselves, a community, a chosen people, a royal priesthood. Apart form each other we simply stumbling blocks. Together we are the church in which life dwells. Not simply a building, a physical construction, but a spiritual dwelling place where life resides, where Christ resides. As living stones we are only useful to this community, we only have life to give to this community after life has been sculpted into us by the removing of our death, the chiseling off of all our useless and ignoble extremities that cover and hide the life within. Only the sculptor can give us live. A stone cannot carve itself. As we are carved we are molded to fit the cornerstone, who is Christ. If we resist being fit to the cornerstone we will weaken the building, the temple, and we will make it susceptible to all forces of destruction.  All living stones are most importantly founded upon the living stone, the living cornerstone. May we as living stones, be unified to be a dwelling in which life is found, founded upon the cornerstone, Christ. This is the church, this is the body, this is the bride.