Greetings brothers and sisters… Pastor Rob here
A number of years ago, my wife and I would go on these very romantic dates… collecting rocks! Well, maybe it wasn’t so romantic, but it was something we did together! We used to drive around in our pick-up truck searching for stones of various sizes and shapes to put into the rock hearth I was building in our house. When we got home with a small load of rocks, I would mix up a bucket of mortar and stack up those rocks, like a jigsaw puzzle in the corner of our living room. The finished product came out pretty nice! There are rocks of many different colors, shapes and sizes that are all held together by the mortar… many individual stones, all joined together into a unified structure. Hey! That description sounds very familiar! It sounds an awful lot like the church… many individual stones joined together into a unified structure. That is exactly how Peter describes the church; “As you come to him (Jesus Christ) a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, 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.” (1 Peter 2:4-5) Every believer is a living stone in the house of God… The church!
I like to think of it this way: Before I was saved, I was a little more than a lifeless rock lying on the side of the road. But the Lord Jesus saw me lying there and had pity on me. He picked me up, breathed life into me, and put me into the body of Christ, giving me a new identity in His church. I am now a living stone in the house of God.. hallelujah!
Staying with this analogy; if we are all living stones built together in the church, what would be the mortar that holds us together? The apostle Paul gives us the answer in the book of Colossians: “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meeknesss, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Colossians 3:12-14) The Love of God among the brethren is the “mortar” that holds everything together! It is the love of God by the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit that motivate believers to put up with one another, forgive one another and encourage one another. We are all like stones… a little rough around the edges maybe? But the powerful love of God enables us to overlook one another’s faults and love each other as Christ has loved us.
I am looking at my hearth right now. Each stone has its own place in the hearth. And each stone is in contact with several other stones. But it is the mortar that binds the stones together and makes them one. So it is in the church of Jesus Christ: When we have love one to another, though we are different in many ways, we are united in the body of Christ.
—Pastor Rob
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