What to do with Stones

Published by christi on March 3, 2022

Sometimes my thoughts are like a skittish school of herring, flashing this way and that at the least provocation. I found myself asking God to settle them, or herd them into His net. Is it on the right side of the boat or the left? It isn’t always that He gives a specific direction like that. There are some:  worship Me on this mountain, wash in the Jordan, gather in Jerusalem, cast your net on the right side of the boat, pitch your tents facing this way.

For many daily things, it seems, He leaves much to our discretion, but never to be apart from His Spirit or detached from His power. Instead, He instructs us to make a living sacrifice of our bodies, every faculty and flaw, every talent and timidity, every desire and delight laid on the altar of everyday stones. These are the events that impede our progress, bruise our feet, stub our toes, as well as the ones we pick up as weapons to defend ourselves, and to build a memorial to His work in our lives. As we collect these “undressed” (meaning not fashioned with human intent or effort) stones, we can assemble them as a defensive barrier, a weapons cache, or an altar on which to offer the sacrifices of repentance, broken-heartedness, willingness, and obedience.

Today, the stones in my path include:  my continuing struggle to refrain from late night snacking, a leg still recovering from joint replacement, estrangement from some who are very dear to me, clutter of my own making, a garden that is mostly weeds. All these form the altar on which I sacrifice all the faculties God has entrusted to me, giving them back to Him to do with as He pleases. I want to think His thoughts about them . I commit to act in accordance to those thoughts. I do not want to be one moment in rebellion, nor to take as mine that which is His.

This is not my first time in this place, nor will it be my last: every day a wrestle of ownership vs stewardship; every morning full of hope for change and sorrow over the lack thereof. Paul says he dies daily…I guess this is the fact of a living sacrifice,” the truth that is it a relationship not a business transaction.

My agreement with God is a living thing, not a dusty document. There is no life in parchment and ink (unless the Holy Spirit brings it to life). It is both a document carved in stone everlasting AND a delicate developing dance, a pas de deux, both a path and a walk on it.

His death once-for-all and my life of daily-breath deaths.

Following Jesus every day in the everyday,

Christi