As we pay attention to our Christian lives, as we ought to do, we have a tendency to focus on the things we do or have done, as though the whole thing were a matter of bookkeeping in a ledger, instead of taking our actions as indicators or “tells” of what we are turning into. We are either growing up into the perfect man, the Lord Jesus, or we are growing in a slow spiral toward some tragic and very lonesome finality. But the mercy, or the justice, as the case may be, are examples of transformation, not examples of an arbitrary sentencing falling on very similar creatures.
When congregations build church buildings, this is either a testimony or a mask. It is either a declaration of what we are all becoming in Jesus Christ, or it is an attempt to substitute with blocks of stone what God will only receive from tender hearts.
If the latter is the case, it would be far better to forgo building altogether, and just concentrate of getting our hearts right. Neither do we want to be okay with God at the start but have the challenges of building become a point of stumbling. We know how it is possible for someone to be so frazzled by wedding prep that they are in no spiritual shape to enjoy the wedding. Or a woman preparing a celebratory meal to be so overwhelmed by the work that something quite distinct from celebration is being prepared in her heart.
Scripture says this: “Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than an house full of sacrifices with strife” (Prov. 17:1). In the same way, it would be far better to worship in a gym forever than to build a glorious building that functioned as a wrecking ball for the actual spiritual building, the one made out of living stones.
Fortunately, it is not necessary to choose. But we should always know, if we had to choose, what that choice would be.
So let the stones cry out.