Be A Detective and Figure Out What is Wrong Next Door
Ed, my neighbor next door, never fails to see that my garden rows are always slightly crooked. When Ed mentioned that I should keep my glasses on while planting my garden, I knew he was referring to my less than straight garden rows. Some folks have a straight eye, and hardly need any help in keeping rows straight, but some of us cannot draw a straight line with a ruler. I have told Ed that he should have been a private eye or a detective because he has an eye for details.
Ed can see exactly what is wrong at our place from his yard. Last week alone, Ed noticed that the screen on my gazebo door has become lose on one side of the door, the eve-trough at the front of the house has been running over in the rain and making a puddle on the sidewalk. Ed claimed that last Monday morning by eleven a.m., the sun had brought twelve dandelions into bloom in my front yard, and twenty–nine in my back yard. I refused to count my dandelions to see how accurate Ed was in his count. When I sprayed my dandelions, Ed spotted that I was using a commercial weed killer rather than my homemade spray. He observed that I must have found my homemade stuff killed my grass as well as the dandelions.
I tell Ed that he acts as a private eye watching to discover what I’m doing wrong. He is also like a boss deciding what I still need to do. “I can see what you need to do in the time it takes to have a cigarette,†Ed stated. This led me to tell him that I’m considering removing my front and back lawn and putting in stones instead of grass. Ed could not decide if I would really do it. He thinks I love to cut grass and to spray weeds. This may not be the case. He is more than curious because he doesn’t want the house next door to him with lawns of stones.
Stones may not be the preferred choice for lawns, but stones do hold a great significance in the Bible. When Moses wrote the Ten Commandments on the two tables of stone, it was clear what the people should or should not do in a relationship with God, and in relationship with each other. Yet, when folks went about keeping those commandments they stumbled. They found themselves walking on stones that kept shifting under their feet. Many wanted to love God above everything and love their neighbor as themselves, but it turned out to be rocky dead end. Then, as today, if we talk about the Ten Commandments they seem straightforward and achievable. When go about obeying them in thought, word and action we fail to keep them perfectly in all their exact details.
In God’s mercy, He laid a precious cornerstone in Zion, Jesus Christ, that those who trust in Him will never be put to shame. We come to Jesus Christ the living stone, because He obeyed the commandments perfectly for us, and gave that perfect obedience to God on our behalf. He is the cornerstone of our forgiveness before God. The rock we stand on.
