Devotion 5.1.26

1 Peter 2

4 As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For it stands in Scripture:

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone,

  a cornerstone chosen and precious,

and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

7 So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,

“The stone that the builders rejected

  has become the cornerstone,”

8 and

“A stone of stumbling,

  and a rock of offense.”

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, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

My dad was not a complicated man by any sense of modern standards. He was a man of simple means brought about by growing up in rural Minnesota during the Depression and having lost his mother by the age of eight. His dad was a man who was left with six children and no means to raise them, so he literally went to his parent's (Dad's grandparents) farm in even more rural Minnesota. This shaped who my dad was tremendously.

I was watching the movie, "Excalibur" (1981, Helen Mirren, Patrick Stewart, Liam Neeson are among the actors no one knew at the time), and Dad, not much of a movie person came in and sat and watched it with me. At the end, when they discover the Holy Grail is in Camelot, my dad observed, "So it was there the entire time." Wow, just wow, I thought. My dad is someone who understands more than he lets on.

Such is the life of a midwestern farm boy growing up on a very-German farm in rural Minnesota. He knew his place (work, don't talk, faith matters, and providing for your family matters equally).

Today takes us to stones. Yesterday, stones were used to kill a man for speaking God's truth. Today, Christ (a metaphorical stone), is the stone which is used to lay as the foundation to our faith. The faithful dispersed throughout Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) understand this use of stone as part of their heritage. Israel laid great stones as foundation to build monuments of great stone as slaves in Egypt, and once freed, their skills as stonecutters went into building Solomon's temple (1 Kings 5). Peter's use of this metaphor in citing Isaiah is not mistaken by him or to the listener.

Christ is that cornerstone. This faith he provides makes us living stones, again, not mistaken by the hearer. Christ proclaimed, in Luke 19, that if the disciples were silenced, "even these stones would cry out." (v 40)

Our faith makes us a royal priesthood, given the ability and responsibility to share God's Word. Peter is assuring the persecuted then, some of whom were stoned for what they believed and shared like Stephen at the hands of Saul, that God gives us all the ability to endure hardship and suffer for a short time in order to share his Word. Christ, the cornerstone of our faith, makes us "living stones."

We know our place as believers to share God's Word in a world that needs to hear it.

Pray with me: Gracious God, Thank you for permanently setting the cornerstone of our faith, your Son Jesus Christ, so that we may be living stones who can share your Word with those in our community in need of hearing your Word. In Christ's name, Amen.