Living Stones

 Living Stones by Elizabeth Stone

I Peter 2:4,5

Come to Him, that Living Stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious; and like livings stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.  

What could be more dead than stone?  Yet Peter grabs this image of stone, weaves it into the ancient idea of a keystone, or capstone – a stone that holds an entire structure together – and identifies the LORD Jesus Christ as that Stone, the cornerstone of God’s eternal household, made of living stones.  Jesus, Who came alive again after death, is the foundation of the New Covenant, a Covenant based not on tribes or bloodlines or inherited land in the Promised Land of the Old Covenant, but on salvation by faith through grace.  We belong in God’s household because we believe.  “See what love the Father has for us that we should be called the children of God, AND SO WE ARE!” I John 3:1. We belong in God’s family through faith, His household is made up of people whose hearts of stone have been transformed by belief in Christ, who became His kids and received new hearts, hearts of flesh.  So we get to stroll into Heaven as home, because our Father God owns the whole household.  And Jesus our Savior, our elder Brother, the Pioneer and Perfecter of our faith, has blazed a way into Paradise for us, and prepared a place for us, a home there, just for each of us.  And as we come to Him, that Living Stone, we are transformed from dead to alive, we live because He lives.  We are alive not just for this world, but for eternity. 

Life is what the Gospel is all about.  Love is the why of Christ’s mission, but life is the what, it is the reason Jesus came to earth to save us.  He restores life to all of us who believe, resurrection life that lasts into eternity.  Resurrection stories follow hard after Jesus’ resurrection from that first empty-tomb morning until today.  Peter, rough fisherman turned disciple, then denier turned apostle.  People coming to faith, thousands baptized, new believers from all nations exploding into a church on fire with the Holy Spirit because of the resurrection power of Christ’s new life.  When I met Christ as a lonely 16-year-old my hard heart became alive, and life has never been the same.  Resurrection power has marked every step I have walked, has empowered me to accomplish the impossible, including finding my calling in Christ as a writer and speaker.  Resurrection power brought my daughter Erin, back from the brink of death in 2007 when she attempted suicide.  God gave her a whole new life.  WV Living Stone Ministries is about sharing life, life that comes from God, makes us members of His household, and plugs us into Christ our Living Stone so that we too, become alive, impossibly and gloriously alive, forever. 

What could be more dead than stone?  Can’t think of anything.  What could be more alive than hearts made alive in Christ?  Nothing in this world or the next. 

Gift Basket 1: My Own French Beach

 

I am a cancer survivor.  Found a lump on my breast in December of 2017, right before Christmas.  Merry Christmas to me! My doctors set me up for surgery and radiation, and in the six weeks between the first images on the ultrasound and the treatment, it more than doubled in size.  Don’t be looking at my girls, they’re still about the same size.  Miracles of modern surgery.  But the day you hear the words, “It’s cancer,” that is life changing, shattering to body and soul. 

Halfway through my radiation treatments, my radiation oncologist asked me, “How are your treatments? Are they pleasant?” I couldn’t believe it. Pleasant?  Was he serious?  That’s what we all want to do, strip to the waist, go into a cold dark room, lie on a foam brace formed to our body to keep us stable and in one position, with no deodorant, and have someone shoot dangerous levels of radiation into our bodies.  My own French beach.  When I found my voice I said, “Give me a paper and pencil and I can write down ten million things I’d rather be doing right now.”  Poor dear man.  I prayed for him.  Perhaps he was hoping that this horrible treatment for a horrible disease would give me hope.  But the only thing that gives me hope is: Jesus.  The only One I count on for peace in the middle of the cancer storm is: Jesus.

Jesus said there would be days like this.  Days when we have trouble and heartache.  John 16:33 “I have said these things to you that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world.”

All of us cancer patients pray for healing.  Friends and family were prayed for me.  On the day of the surgery I had people praying in 5 counties, 4 states, and 3 foreign countries; I told my surgeon I was probably going to levitate right off the operating table from the spiritual support of the people of God.  But cancer healing is long and arduous, and for the rest of your life you are: a survivor.  Life is no longer measured by age, but by how long I have survived since my diagnosis.  I am: a survivor.

People came around me not just with prayers, but with support.  Don’t look to me for miracle cures or medical advice; I am not qualified to heal anybody physically. But I will share what people did for me, simple gifts and practical love that have made the journey easier.  A gift basket of kindnesses. 

Soon after my surgery women from the Fayetteville Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville West Virginia showed up at my door with wonderful gifts.  The first was a set of pillows, a big u-shaped one to go under my body, a small one to support my surgery site, and a third one to support my arm.  They were homemade, pink, and decorated with beautiful eyelet embroidery.  The second gift was after-sun lotion.  Radiation caused a surface burn on my skin, just like sunburn.  My doctors recommended the same thing, but these ladies told me to apply it lavishly.  I got a sunburn in one specific area.  You can’t have any lotion on your skin in the radiation room, but after each treatment – and I had two each day – I applied that after-sun stuff.  And after the treatments were over, eventually it turned to tan, again in one specific area.  It was March, and I had my winter whiteness, except in one spot that nobody could see.  The third gift they gave me was a prayer shawl.  The ladies at that church have a group called the Knit-wits who make beautiful prayer shawls for people; mine is pink and has a wooden cross attached to the corner.  They make the shawls, pray over them, and send them out to people in need of prayer – not just cancer patients.  That prayer shawl went with me to every treatment, and at the hospitality house when I was alone in my room I wrapped it around me.  It was like the prayer and arms of the people of God to comfort me.

Jesus also said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”  The Gospel is about life.  We who are believers in Jesus are not just survivors, we are thrivers.  We thrive because we know that this is not the end.  In this broken world we live in the journey often includes trouble, Jesus said so.  But it also includes the hope of eternal life, that even should cancer take us through death’s door, it can’t kill us.  Our lives are hid with God in Christ, and we will live eternally. 

by Elizabeth Stone

wvlivingstone.com

#wvlivingstone #breastcancerawareness #fightlikeagirl #healinginChrist 

 

When my soul fainted within me,
I remembered the LORD; 
and my prayer came to You,
into Your holy temple. 
Those who pay regard to vain idols
forsake their true loyalty,
But I with the voice of thanksgiving
will sacrifice to You; 
what I have vowed I will pay. 

Deliverance belongs to the LORD! 

Jonah 2:7-9

For all of September I will be preaching Jonah.  His story resonates with all of us, because who hasn’t been faced with a job for the LORD, and not wanted to do it?  Who hasn’t felt at one time or another that they were in the deep belly of a fish in darkness and misery?  Who hasn’t felt like they were vomited up into a situation they never wanted?  And who hasn’t felt resentment when someone we dislike has escaped our version of justice?  If any of these has happened to you, you are in good company, because Jonah felt all these things. 

This prayer, from the belly of the big fish, confirms all that Jonah knows to be true of God.  Hebrews believed that prayers had special effect if they were spoken in the temple of the LORD, but Jonah can’t get there.  So from the depths of the ocean, from a belly of the fish, Jonah asks for help and trusts that his prayer finds it way to the temple and so to God.  He also counts on returning to the temple some day to pay the vows he’s making in that dark place, of giving thanksgiving and a sacrifice of praise. 

When we are in trouble, we may be sure that our prayers make it to the very throne of grace, that God hears all our petitions, and we can count on returning to our places of worship to give public thanks, to make offerings, and to praise God because we know: Salvation belongs to the LORD!

Elizabeth Stone

September 5:  Jonah 1 “Recalcitrant Prophet”                                                                                    September 12: Jonah 2 “3-Day Prayer”                                                                                                  September 19: Jonah 3 “180° Turnaround”                                                                                              September 26: Jonah 4 “Sour Grapes”

Catch my sermons at Stanford Presbyterian Church's Facebook page, or at www.stanfordpresbyterian.org  or www.wvlivingstone.com 

Of Church Camp and Christian Parenting

 

 

Excerpt from Valley of the Shadow by Elizabeth and Erin Stone, © 2014.

 

Christian parents often think that engendering faith in their children is a natural.  For those of us who came to Christ independent of our families, we think that our kids will get it and will always cling to it, just because they have the benefit of being raised by Christian parents.  But the truth is that every child has to come to Christ on his or her own.  Every person has to make that commitment, not as an extension of what they have been taught and seen in their parents, but independently.  I prayed for all of my children.  From the moment I knew they existed I prayed that always they would know the love of God.  I prayed for them to know how we loved them, and that they would see the Kingdom of God lived out in the microcosm of our family life.  But I also prayed that God would make Himself real to each of them, that all of them would make the decision to follow Christ and accept salvation through Him.  But for our kids, the most significant factor in finding faith was church camp. . .

Our church camp is what you would call “rustic.”  We slept in cabins with electric lights, the bathroom was several hundred yards down the path.  It was on a man-made lake in Ohio, and we swam in the lake.  Folks who have passed through that camp all have a great love of it, and most try to spend time there every year.  What made it special was the genuine faith of the people there, the sacrificial servanthood of the staff and volunteers, the ultimate authority of the Bible in the organization and teaching, and the mission of sharing the Gospel with as many kids as possible.  Going to camp is like stepping into a faith community from the book of Acts, if just for a week.  The whole camp is like an impromptu church, organized around the teaching of the apostles.  The small groups and cabin groups are like house churches, having devotions, learning and working together.  Everyone comes together for a common meal, and then goes off for their various activities, only to come together at the open-air chapel by the lake for vespers every evening.  Kids come from all kinds of families, and they get to participate in a Christian community in miniature, and experience God’s love in that context.   As parents, I think Greg and I did everything we could to catechize our children, to bring them up in the fear and admonition of the Lord.  But every one of our kids, without exception, says that the place where Jesus Christ became real to them was at church camp. . .

One by one, my children took their turns going off to camp.  They started when they were five and they still try to go every year. And one by one, each made his or her commitment to Christ, maybe at the outdoor chapel, maybe at the prayer rock, maybe at the campfire, or in the gazebo.  And to our great joy and eternal blessing, every one of them from Josh on down, turned around and served as a counselor.  Patrick and Rebekah also hired on as staff, John-Mark has now followed in his father’s footsteps and taught high school camp, and Erin directed junior camp.  Camp’s great benefit is that we received more than we ever contributed.  Our kids not only learned faith in a dynamic Christian community, but they fellowshipped with people from other church traditions. Our camp would often have a missionary staff person from another country: Russia or Kenya or Latin America.  The lasting impact on camp and on our kids has been so much for the good, because as they interacted with people from different Christian backgrounds and different cultures, they saw that the grace of Christ is the same throughout the Church and throughout the world.  Whatever our outward skin color or culture or rituals, there was always a common denominator of faith, a marker that was recognizable in any person who belonged to Christ.  And instead of being a barrier to Christian community, everyone learned to appreciate the gifts and the diversity without losing the focus on Christ.  In a few weeks of intensive fellowship every summer a foundation of grace was built in the hearts of these kids, and a kindred spirit among them that expressed itself across the miles and months of the school year with letters and phone calls and impromptu gatherings, as well as lifelong friendships.  This foundation became an anchor – one of the many God provided – to tether us to hope during the difficult times ahead.

Copyright © 2014 Elizabeth Stone.  All rights reserved. 

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK     1-800-273-8255

 

For the next several weeks, Erin and I will be sharing excerpts from our book, Valley of the Shadow, published in 2014.

Prologue: Are we healed yet?

           

It is Thanksgiving eve, the twilight hour.  In the chill of the night, with a dusting of snow on the ground, two stealthy figures emerge from my house.  Shrouded in darkness, they come to the vehicles, and using the keys, they enter.  The interior lights are quickly doused, and the perpetrators hide within.  Both sliding doors of the mini-van are quietly opened, leaving them ajar.  Windows on our sub-compact are rolled down, and there the two warriors take up their positions.  It grows darker and colder, and still they wait, knowing that their ambush is unsuspected and of genius proportions.  Eventually, an old red jeep pulls up to the house.  Since the driveway is already to capacity with vehicles, it pulls onto the lawn.  A tall brown-haired young man emerges with a black cocker spaniel at his heels, and a second young man, with lighter hair and blue eyes, is disgorged from the passenger side.  With a war cry unrivaled in history their attackers leap from their positions, this one wearing a sombrero and the other with goggles and a pink karate helmet.  The young men know their female siblings are upon them, with a well thought out strategy and the element of surprise.  Suddenly the peace of the neighborhood is rent by the sound of electronic automatic weapons, plastic foam darts with rubber tips soar through the air.  Ah, curses! One of the weapons jams, resulting in an all out charge.  The boys, not in any way cowardly or unprepared, leap to retrieve their own weapons, previously loaded and lying ready on the back seat. For the next hour there is a barrage of darts sometimes hitting, mostly missing, as my adult children tear through my house and yard aiming at each other.   These largely innocuous missiles, many of which will lie hidden in couches and behind dressers until the next family gathering, these form one of our traditional reunion rituals. What started as a couple of gag gifts has snowballed into a highly competitive strategic game, and now the grandchildren have become corrupted. 

 

            I often wonder, years after the event, if we are healed yet, if we are back to normal. What makes a normal Christian family life?  Is it the way we dress, or the particular church we attend? Is it Bible reading and prayer at mealtimes? Is it the absence of certain behaviors and the presence of others?  Is it the foods we eat or the way we vote or the music we listen to?  And when things go wrong, does that mean we have failed?  Have we failed God, have we failed ourselves?  Are we no longer worthy of the name of Christian?  Is our witness for Christ destroyed?  What happens to faith when the unthinkable happens?  Where is Christ in the furnace of human tragedy?    

 

            I found Erin in the closet, lying on the floor.  I had stuck my head in the door to tell her to wake up and take the dog out, but she never appeared.  Tired and frustrated that I was again coercing her to take care of what was supposed to be her and her sister’s dog, I stormed into her room and grabbed her by the arm to get her up.  But her arm flopped down to the floor.  She was lying across her half-packed suitcase, the insides of which held not only her clothes but also pools of vomit.  That’s how I found my precious baby girl; that’s how the nightmare began.

 

            What is the worst day of your life?  Can you pinpoint it? I can. The worst day of my life was that hot summer morning, the day I became a statistic.  When you become a statistic, life is thrown into a tailspin.  We tend to quantify life in terms of percentages: 50% divorce rate, 33% of all women contract cancer, approximately 4400 teen suicides every year.  But when you experience it, it is no longer this abstract quantity out there, sanitized by impersonal percentages, all of a sudden you are the statistic, and it is raw, emotional, and fills every corner of your soul.  In the economy of Heaven numbers are not important, but we live in a world that analyzes the tragedies of life.  This is my story, the story of my family, when we became a statistic.  And it is the story of how God’s redeeming love burns brightest in the furnace, how He walks with us in the furnace.

 

Copyright © 2014 Elizabeth Stone.  All rights reserved.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK     1-800-273-8255

 

We all know the best food is made from scratch.  Fresh ingredients combined and cooked on the day you eat them and cooked to your taste.  Cookies, straight from the oven, bread that has been kneaded and baked spread with butter while its still warm, pies, cakes, doughnuts, fritters, everyone has their favorite treats and we all know that they are best when they are made: from scratch. 

Lots of heroes and heroines of the Bible started from scratch.  Without visible resources or help, they accomplished great things for God’s people in the most meagre circumstances possible.  Moses started from scratch with the people of Israel who were enslaved and powerless.  Deborah started with ravaged empty grain fields and timid soldiers.  David started with a misfit group of disgruntled warriors, ready to go off at any minute.  Ezra and Nehemiah started with displaced exiles just trying to survive.  Jesus started with twelve unlikely disciples.  After Peter denied His Lord, he was sifted like wheat by the devil, and by God's power started over to encourage the brethren.  Paul’s life as a leading Pharisee was ripped away on the road to Damascus, and he started life all over as a missionary.  Lydia started a house church with a group of prayerful women who were struggling in ignorance.  Jesus Christ started from being dead in a tomb, written off by followers and opponents, and He burst from that tomb in glorious resurrection power to change the world.

Why is God so enamored of starting from scratch?  He created the world from scratch.  After we sinned and corrupted God’s world, He saved us with His own Son.  The Lord Jesus Christ, our second Adam, remade this world and saved us, starting from scratch.  God brings His people through difficult circumstances, often putting us in the extremity of need, so that He gets our attention.  Then God takes us through new vistas of His loving care, His miraculous solutions to our problems, and His calling on our lives to share in Kingdom building, starting from scratch. 

Paul said, “For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.  For God Who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and to us.”  II Corinthians 4:5-7

Starting from scratch: whether it is from our first encounter with the living Christ or if we find ourselves hit by circumstances that bring us down to a place of starting over, God always meets us there with resources and help that can only be from His hand.  When we land at the bottom and begin again by faith, it is here that the surpassing power of God really shines in our lives.  We become the clay jars holding the eternal treasure of the Gospel for all to see.  So when you find yourself in what seems like a dry, barren place, remember that starting from scratch is God's favorite recipe for great things.  Pray, and look around for the ingredients that He has surely placed there to help you, because your story will add to the many other inspiring grace stories where God started from scratch.     

Elizabeth Stone, B.S. MDiv.

wvlivingstone.com

Our Light in the Darkness

 

Christmas Eve 2020, the same, but different.  The sanctuary, beautifully decorated, had half the pews cordoned off with purple Advent tape (that had been there since Lent), and communion was pre-packaged.  An overflow space was prepared in fellowship hall should we exceed our governor’s mandates for maximum occupancy, and the candles for passing the light from the Christ candle were set out for worshippers.  Techy guys had been trained on our new high-definition camera, the sound system was linked and the wi-fi was up to speed for online broadcast. We thought we were ready for any contingency.

Then the snow hit.  White Christmas pouring down.  The temperature dropped 40° and the snow covered my yard and car in less than an hour; it settled on the wet roads, creating a slick icy layer underneath and the white topping made the lines invisible.  I left home three hours early to drive the 40 miles to church, avoiding over-cautious drivers going thirty miles an hour and dodging the crazy people going eighty, zipping in and out of traffic.  Anxiety was running high before I even arrived.  I stepped out into the quiet of the snow-covered twilight.

What with covid-19 (still plaguing us in 2020) and the sudden snow, few were in church (no overflow tonight!). But we believe that numbers don’t matter, so in-house or online the congregation is whoever shows up; the folks God wants there are always there.  And people got their money’s worth; we forged ahead with the full Christmas Eve service: lessons and carols, sermon, special choir pieces, organ solos, and communion.  

Spiritually exhausted as I always am after worship, I climbed back in my car and headed home.  Typically I enjoy the Christmas lights and peace of stores finally shut down for Christmas, but not tonight. The roads were worse, not better, and there was no evidence that trucks had plowed or laid down salt or cinder.  With four-wheel drive and good tires, I wasn’t afraid, but I soon realized the long way home was the best: the back roads were particularly dangerous, so I headed back out to the main arteries.  The actuators on the side roads were so covered with snow the light wouldn’t change in my favor to make a left, so I had to make a right, then another right.  The next light wouldn’t change either, so I waited and waited and waited, and when traffic was clear for a country mile in each direction, I made my left anyway, and eventually got home by the long route, two hours instead of a 50-minute journey.  

Making the last turn onto our street, my heart lifted when I saw: luminaries.  Every few feet on our road someone had placed luminaries, little bright sentinels reaching as far up the hill as I could see and leading the way home. Shining bravely in their little paper bags as the snow continued to fall, they would not be quenched.  I thought of the Light of the world shining in the darkness at Bethlehem, when the unexpected birth of the Christ Child changed the world.

Unprecedented times, unprecedented circumstances do not quench the Light of lights that is Jesus.  Do not be distracted. Do not be dismayed. The Light of the world still shines in our darkness, whatever it is, and He leads us all the way home. 

Elizabeth Stone, BS, MDiv

www.wvlivingstone.com