Let all that I am praise the Lord. O Lord my God, how great you are! Psalm 104: 1a

Stones

             Since granddaughters, Serenity and Zoe, ages five and two respectively, had last been here, we'd had a load of stone spread in our long driveway.  Zoe was delighted!  She loves rocks, all rocks, even, apparently, the uniform crushed limestone in our drive. While we were trying to go for a walk, she kept pulling me up short so she could stop to grab yet another stone.  They all looked the same to me, but she was so excited.  She tossed each "treasure" into the wagon.  So enthralled was she that at one point she squatted down and eagerly rubbed the palms of her toddler hands all over those stones, caressing them as if they were beloveds.  Her older sister, far ahead of us by now, was losing patience.         

            "Come on, Zoe!" she called.

            After a few more caresses, Zoe sighed an I-may-never-see-you-again kind of sigh, said a resigned, "Okay," and forcing herself to rise, followed her sister.  You could tell that it cost her greatly to leave those stones.  It was so dramatic!  It cracked me up, and I really couldn't understand how the uniform gray of crushed limestone could be so intriguing, until it hit me that Zoe lives in town where sidewalks and paved drives are the norm.  Rocks are anomalies, treasures to be discovered along the way.  Context is everything.

            Zoe got me thinking about stones.  In Jesus' day, stones were a part of the everyday conversation.  They figured heavily in daily life, and are mentioned often in the Gospels.  Following are just a few examples:

·       Jesus told religious leaders not to rely on the fact that they were Abraham's descendents to save them, but to repent and turn to God, because God could "create children of Abraham from these very stones," (Luke 3:8) if He so chose. 

·       During the temptation in the desert, the devil tempted the fasting Jesus to, "'tell this stone to become a loaf of bread.' But Jesus told him, "No! The Scriptures say, 'People do not live by bread alone.' (Luke 4: 3b-4)

·       When the woman caught in adultery was brought to Jesus, He said to her accusers, "He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first" (John 8: 7).

·       When the Pharisees told Jesus to rebuke His followers for shouting and singing His praises as He rode into Jerusalem, Jesus replied, "If they kept quiet, the stones along the road would burst into cheers!"  (Luke 19:40)

·       Speaking of himself, "Jesus looked at them and said, "Then what does this Scripture mean?  'The stone that the builders rejected has now become the cornerstone?  Everyone who stumbles over that stone will be broken to pieces, and it will crush anyone it falls on" (Luke 20: 17-18).

·       In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus "walked away, about a stone's throw" (Luke: 22: 41) away from the disciples before he knelt down to pray.

·       When Jesus on the cross said, "It is finished," and died, the Temple veil was torn, the earth shook, and "rocks split apart" (Matthew 27:51).

·       Last, and far from least, there was that most thrilling discovery that, "the stone had been rolled away from the entrance," (Luke 24:2) of Jesus' tomb.

            So today, with what I hope looks something like Zoe's eagerness and enthusiasm, I'm rubbing my hands over these stones, taking joy in feeling their texture and weight.  After all, they have to do with my Beloved.        

Daye Phillippo

May 2014