Sunday, April 17, 2005

The Brick:

Beyond the familiar trail which leads from present existence to memories of people pasted, I walked. Next to the trail was where I trudged, remembering the old, but forging the new. Though I walked with them together, I walked alone and I walked on. Past the memories which brought me to this place lie an unmarked trail, untread.

Betwixt flora and fauna, flowers and field, I found what would puzzle me, cause me to stumble, and reveal a great truth about myself. Covered in timeless sediment and bordering the edge of field and the beginning of a chasm, there lay a forgotten slab of marble. It possessed sides which hinted and haunted that I am not alone and I am fully known. One side was smooth and seemingly perfect. This was the face which pointed to the world. One side was terrible flawed. It’s edge was rough and misshapen to challenge the builder to use it despite it’s flaws. One side was dirty from it’s undeterminably stay in the mud. The final side was broken. It appeared to have been used once, as if this small rock mattered to a greater whole. It too was covered in the dirty and shame of being rendered broken. It was discarded, thrown to the wayside with unused asphalt and concrete. It was forgotten.

Yet, it caught my eye, not for what it was, but for what I saw it could be. I saw potential in this stone the builders rejected. I saw more than something that needed to be fixed. I saw every flaw, but in it, I saw me.

Like the marble, I possessed all sides, blemished and un, broken and dirty. I had been used, had been broken, had been dirty. I had remained unseen and forgotten. But like that brick, someone found me. That same person reacted to me as I did the brick. It was picked out the sediment, carried to a refuge, carefully cleaned, and used to point others to Christ.

God is not done with this rock. He is not done with you either. Like this stone, the possibilities of your life are limitless when they are held in the right hands. I am no stone cutter or great sculptor, but the artist who paints the sunrise every morning is truly the master of taking what is flawed, dirty, and broken and transforming them into something beyond our wildest dreams.