Bricks or Rocks

Here in Houston, you can see houses made of all kinds of materials.  Today we drove around the neighborhood and saw plenty of stucco and wood (or pseudo-wood) siding, but the great majority of the houses were made of wood or brick.  Although our own house is mostly pinkish brick, I really wish it had some stone somewhere...

Stone is made by God, even if shaped by men.  Brick is all man-made.

Stone is unpredictable.  Brick is expected, regular.

Stone takes thought to piece together.  Brick is easy.

Stone is expensive.  Brick is much much less.

While there's nothing wrong with having a house out of brick, I can't get away from this idea that stone is somehow ... more real.

That whole thing reminds me of the way I might build my life.  It's tempting to take the quick way out, the predictable path, and build using the materials that are of my own making.  It's less expensive and so much easier to slap up a life-wall that is made of ho-hum habits and no-risk choices. 

But what is fascinating is taking a slow, piece-by-piece approach, asking God what the next component should be, and how he wants it all to fit together. Even if those building blocks are irregularly shaped, costly, and unpredictible, it is worth it to have a finished project that has a compelling reality. 

May my life be built of stone!


Note:Folks who are around me a while know I admire a scholar named Peter Leithart.  Here's something he recently wrote about brick-making:

Bricks

by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, March 24, 2011 at 3:50pm

Babel is the first brick construction in Scripture (Genesis 11:3). They burn earthy clay to make it into building material for the city and the tower that reaches to heaven. Egypt also deals in brick, and puts Israel to work making the bricks for its storage cities, its neo-Babels (Exodus 1:14; 5:7, 8, 16, 18-19).

The next time bricks are mentioned in Scripture is Isaiah 9:10, where the men of Ephraim respond to the collapse of “bricks” with the plan to build instead with hewn stones (Isaiah 9:. They are Babelites, constructors of a new oppressive Egypt, from which the faithful remnant will have to be redeemed. In context, the word “brick” (lebenah) puns with the “great hearts” (leb) of the men.

What are they building from bricks? The only other use of the word in Isaiah may help: Isaiah 65:3 refers to idolatrous offerings of incense upon “altars of brick.” In chapter 9, they are building brick altars; Yahweh makes them “fall” by His word that “falls” on Israel (v. 8); no matter, say the brick-hearted Babegyptians of Samaria, we’ll build it again, better this time.