Thursday, March 30, 2006

THE CORNERSTONE

Great buildings seem to have a “personality” about them. One example is the Grand Hotel in Taipei, Taiwan. It is a massive red and gold marvel of oriental majesty.

Numinous feelings dizzy the mind and skip the heart the first time you enter it.

There is a presence of life about it.

In many intricate ways a building patterns itself after a human body. Frame-skeletal system; bricks-cells; plumbing-circulatory system; wiring-nervous system, etc.

Stuart Hamblin’s song called a man’s body, “This ole house.” The scriptures call our bodies “the temple of the Holy Ghost.”

Building structures seem to have a life essence.

Awe of this phenomenon was so great in Tokyo, that ancient (and some not-so-ancient) builders believed that the structure could only live if someone lay down his life for the building.

The victims, usually willing volunteers, were buried alive in the building’s foundation. The lowered cornerstone snuffed out the life of the one honored to be chosen.

Only by doing this could the builders be sure their building would live.

Ephesians 2:20-22 “…Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone in whom all the building fitly framed together growth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye are also builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”

The church—fitly framed and builded together—has as its chief cornerstone the once sacrificed now risen Lord Jesus Christ,

Jesus made sure His building—His Church—would live.

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