Light from a strobe or candle is beautiful, but light from a rock is breathtaking.
We, the living stones, fit into a tabernacle built upon the cornerstone, a spiritual house.
One of my favorite pursuits, and especially with my granddaughter, is to drive to a new (or new to us) neighborhood, park the car, and go looking for houses that are alive.
Perhaps you already know what I mean. Typically, up and down street after street, homes look so dead these days. Some are run-down and some are immaculate and showy, but so many are lifeless. We love to walk up one street and down the next, even for an hour or more, looking for homes that say, “Come in! Welcome! People live here – real living breathing people – and there’s life inside!”
What makes a home look alive? Virtually every time, almost without exception, it is the presence of light. A lamp on a table in front of the living room window. A ceiling light, a small chandelier, visible through the front rooms, sparkling in the kitchen behind. A porch light, solar lamps lining the front walk … something … anything glowing.
I once took a bus trip across country, and out of a dense grey fog, as the sun sank below the far horizon, we rolled into a little town in Ohio. It was a hamlet, really, but every home we passed had a candle in every window. I sat up. I rubbed my eyes. Had I died and gone to Greyhound heaven? I could scarcely believe what I was seeing. I never learned the story of the little village with a light in every window, and I don’t even know where we where, but as you can tell, I would very much like to be in on the secret of those lighted windows.
So ought our presence on earth be to others. A light in each window, in our eyes, the windows to our souls. The light of peace and goodwill and truth without condemnation. It will make people sit up and rub their eyes … and wonder where they are and wish they were in on the secret.
. . . and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
For it stands in scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and he who believes in him will not be put to shame.”
To you therefore who believe, he is precious, but for those who do not believe, “The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner,”
and “A stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall”; for they stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Peter 2:5-9)
photo courtesy of Cable and Track Lighting
Marketplace Monastics 