thoughts on being made to fit.

When we lived in Tennessee, we used to drive past this little Methodist church built from stone. It wasn't a huge building, but it was impressive. From the road, it appeared that those stones were separated by no more than an 1/8th inch of mortar...the worlds largest 3d Tetris game.

This caught my attention because one of my boyhood activities was unaffectionately called 'rock picking'. The continual freeze-and-thaw cycle in North Dakota insures that year after year, rocks are pushed to the surface like some sort of geological prank. Farmers (or their sons....) drive around the field pulling an implement called a 'rock picker' (yes, the tool and the job have the same name....stick with me) and using a hydraulically controlled arm to scoop them up and deposit them in a pile at the end of the field. From this, I learned the great truth that no two rocks are alike. Perhaps now you understand why the Methodist Tetris Church so impressed me.

Trust me, I'm going somewhere with this.

I'm back in Ephesians this morning, reading Chapter Two's description of one new man, being made in Christ, out of the Jew and Gentile. The closing paragraph of the chapter tells us that we're being built into a building, joining together and becoming a holy temple in the Lord. As I read that, I reflected back on my rock picking days and the difficulty that it would have been to make those stones all fit...

Some of them would have to be broken. Hammered on. Chipped away. A few would be shattered, and their smaller pieces fit into places no rock was thought to be able to go.

The questions that came to me were 'who am I being fit with?' and 'what part of me will be chipped away when I'm really fit into the temple that He is building with us?' After all, that church that looked like such a fortress was built primarily by stones that had been pounded, shaped, and cut into submission to the plan of the builder.

Chip away. Some of me has to go.