Living Stones

My early morning sessions with the new pup have been quite self-revealing. Each new morning now providing ample time for reflection upon the day before, as well as the greater scope, both width and depth of influence, with my life now well into its eighth decade!

With each year, new shifts are critical, in fact, if resisted, "shift happens"! Pardon the bumper sticker humor and imagery.

I find myself now often contemplating the culmination of my quite varied career, as well as the future of our small family, along with the last vestiges of my relentless calling to community.

As I sat this morning, the crows were cawing relentlessly in the woods, the sun rising, and of course, the pup at my feet equally relentless as the crows, offering a toy to be thrown once more. In all that cacophony, my eyes seemed drawn toward the stones I had affixed some 18 or so years ago to the fire pit shown above.

These stones were the remnant of a crate full purchased for the early construction of a goldfish pond. Creek stones, none alike, all forged over time in some distant, everflowing stream, perhaps lifted from some mountain valley.

Shifts in the earth's crust had broken them loose from their mother rock, gravity then gradually pulling them forward, finally settling in some low lying mountain creek bed.

There their edges would over time be worn smooth by the current.

Life is that way, glorious and refreshing as a mountain stream at times, but often as violent as some ancient mountain quake. All this dynamic critical to our uniqueness, deeply shaping our purpose for being.

Some of us still carry sharp edges, inherited from earlier life collisions, blows sudden, often veiled somewhere deep in our family's past. Often those fractures were no doing of our own, nevertheless all still felt in our present, with only time and life's stream sufficient for their remedy.

All this somehow still works for our good, if we choose to trust the providence and promises we all at some point surely recognize as available.

Life is not about fate, as we are not alone. Creation screams that!!

You and I represent a unique piece of an inexhaustible God, a mysteriously felt "Spirit", present across the millions of galaxies, convincingly recorded by the ancients from among every civilization.

Our assignment is to stay in the stream, allowing the current to do its work, yet unlike the physical stones affixed to my firepit, we are living stones with unique assignments. So that even while in the stream that shapes us, we are afforded daily opportunity to apply what we have learned to the benefit of those stones around us, somehow transferring value and demonstrating grace. That is true community!

Some journeys are easier than others, though ironically, those with deepest beauty, the diamond like, are forged under the greatest pressure, and often must be sought out.

The scripture says it well, referencing us as "living stones", precious stones, alikened to the Cornerstone, the One rejected, but victorious, the Christ!

We have a ready mentor in Christ, God with us, Emmanuel, the One ever present along side us.

Yes, a silent stream of righteousness is flowing, so gentle it is often unnoticied, but ever present shaping our lives from cradle to grave. Once discovered, there comes "a peace that passes understanding."

That same "voice" that awakens even the birds of the air as the Sun rises, is present to awaken us, as Living Stones!