The stone of heart

The stone of heart

On my wandering through Pinterest I saw a craft that I thought was cute. Someone had encircled the base of a tree with heart shaped rocks and they were all painted with various colors and designs. I decided this could be an entry level craft that I could do with all my grandkids so on my daily walks I started looking for heart shaped rocks. While walking one day I started mulling over the phrase heart of stone. I remembered the verses about God wanting to remove our heart of stone and giving us a heart of flesh.

Ezekiel 36:26-27 “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”

I thought about that for awhile Then I flipped the phrase to stone of heart. I thought you know, that’s who Jesus is. He is the cornerstone, the rock of salvation yet he is loving and kind and gracious. He is a stone made of heart (love).

In the meantime I have been reading through the Gospel of Matthew and a couple of words have stuck out, Every and All.

Whenever Jesus encounters crowds of people, the sick and infirm and lame and blind and demon possessed are brought to him and he heals them, heals them all.

I first noticed it in Matthew 4. Everyone was healed of every sickness disease and demon possession. I note Matthew 4 but the theme holds true throughout the book. He healed everyone, he healed them all.

attendant this writing I am up to chapter 21. Jesus has just entered Jerusalem and the first thing he did was to “cleanse the temple”. He didn’t grab a mop and a broom and start washing the floors. He stopped people from doing evil. He stopped merchants from fleecing the people who came to worship God.

He overturned the money changers tables and those selling doves.

A little background might help those who are unfamiliar with this section of the story. Everyone who came to the temple had to bring an animal sacrifice. The only way to appease God and have sins forgiven was through the shedding of blood. Sheep, goats, bulls, oxen, there were times for each of these to be the required sacrifice but if you were poor, or if you traveled a long way to get to the temple, the entry level sacrifice was a dove. Normally you wouldn’t travel with the dove, A dove needed to be purchased At the temple, an overpriced dove. That was fleecing operation one. overcharge for the required dove sacrifice. fleecing operation two: overcharge for a currency exchange. You needed to buy a sacrifice to make yourself right with God, However, you couldn’t buy it with regular currency. Roman coinage was no good at the temple you had to use temple money which could be exchanged from Roman coinage, but there was a handling fee, exorbitant handling fees. The merchants had turned worship into a money making scheme. And the priests and Pharisees were okay with this. It had become a business.

Jesus disrupted this whole scheme, undid the scam. He overturned the tables and chased away the money grubbing merchants. The ruling authorities were ticked off. They asked Jesus “who do you think you are?!”

“Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”

The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.”

We know from this side of the story that Jesus is the chief corner stone.

He is the stone that the builders rejected.

Matthew 21:42 quoting Psalm 118:22-23.

“Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:

“‘The stone the builders rejected

has become the cornerstone;

the Lord has done this,

and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”

Jesus is the cornerstone of our belief in God. When building a building you You start with the cornerstone. The stone is made level and plumb it is made Straight because everything else is built off of the cornerstone. We are built on him. Jesus is the only human to ever be “level and plumb”. He was and is perfect. We can use him to base our lives on.

He is a stone. Solid. Unmovable. And he is love.

Luke 19:10 says “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

John 3:16-17 says “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

The letter of 1 John says this about God’s love, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.”

Later on in the same letter John continues about God’s love for us, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

God loves us, he sent Jesus to die for us, Jesus loves us, he willingly gave up his life for us to pay for our sins. Jesus after ascending into heaven sent us the Holy Spirit as our comforter, guide, companion, and advocate. What a loving series of actions.

If this is all true then Jesus is as my aimless mental wondering declared the stone of heart.