Green Walls, Living Stones

 

This item featured in this quarter's magazine:

A drystone wall momentarily took me by surprise last month. Such walls are common enough, but they are usually grey or brown, whereas this one was green. The pictures don’t really do justice to the green's vividness; it was certainly enough to stop my tracks as I walked to chapel. Some of it was due to moss, the rest to algae and lichen. The dampness (the path down which I walked is essentially a stream) and lack of direct sunshine has made those old stones change colour. They are green for they are covered in life.

1 Peter 2:4-5 says

Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Christ Himself is pictures here as a living stone, and we His people as living stones also. We live because He has breathed His Spirit into us; our life is no mere covering of green, a veneer of liveliness. Our spirits are more alive than our bodies, which are weak and perishing.