Living Stones

What a paradoxical metaphor Peter uses (1 Ptr.2:4-5) - "Living Stones"! "Stones" conjures thoughts of hardness, solidness, deadness: the very antithesis of "Living".

Yet in the hands of God, the master builder, the passive "stone" is chosen and fitted into the correct place in the building of His spiritual temple.  Just as Jesus "the living stone rejected by man as worthless but chosen by God as valuable" submitted to God's plan, right to the cross and the grave, so we are called to obedience.

Just as no two stones are exactly the same, so we all have our own shape and niche into which we fit - to one the door-step, to another the lintel, another the underground foundation, yet another the carved capping stone.  Then in the beauty of the whole, the very stones "will proclaim the wonderful acts of God".

----xxxXxxx----
Ps.118:22 "The stone which the builders rejected as worthless turned out to be the most important of all"
1 Ptr.2:5 "...let yourselves be used..."
Isa.8:14-15 "This is the stone that will make people stumble and fall"
Eph.2:20-21 "...the foundation...the cornerstone being Christ...the one who holds the whole building together..."
Mt.7:24 "Whoever hears these sayings...like a wise man who built his house on a rock"
1 Cor.3:16 "Don't you know that you are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwells in you?"
Eph.4:16 "Under His control, all the different parts of the body fit together"

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