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 Christ.
1 Peter 2:5 (NIV)
Stones That Do No Lifting
The tomatoes went over a week ago and he hasn’t pulled them out. The hose is coiled by the spigot with a washer he’s been meaning to change since June, and the grass has been cut more times this summer than in the three summers before it put together. He has been out of work since the start of the summer and has more daylight on his hands than he’s ever had.
Christ is the living Stone, rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him. The people who first read that sentence were exiles scattered across five provinces, foreigners where they lived, and some of them were slaves in houses where the master was not always a considerate man.
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 Christ. Peter wrote that to them about their own lives, while they were in the middle of living them.
He wants to be needed somewhere that pays him on Friday. He is being built instead, and that is said about this summer too, the one he would call wasted, the one with the mower and the lawn chair in it and no shift to go to.
He can bring something to God this week, and it is acceptable through Jesus Christ, on the same terms it was acceptable in May when he still had somewhere to be. That part of him did not get laid off.
He is not told what the summer was for, and he is not promised a job in the fall. September in that yard is going to be exactly as long as it is.
The light leaves the yard around six and he goes in and eats. He is being built while he eats. He has that on Peter’s word and on nothing he can see from the kitchen window.
A Prayer to Remember
Lord, I can’t point to one thing I’ve finished since June, and I’ve started reading that as a verdict on me. Give me one thing to do before dark tomorrow, and let it be small enough that I actually do it. And there’s a man on my street in the same stretch I’m in. Put something in front of him too, before dark.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
