Spiritual Foundation Stones

Regardless of our political points of view, I think a common ground experience for all of us is the upending discovery that there is no common ground. 

In these earthquaking, earthshaking times there are four spiritual foundation stones which Jesus taught that are unshakable. Building our lives on these stones will prepare us to live effectively in a world which often confronts us with dissembling intent.

FOUNDATION STONE ONE: Red, yellow, black, white, brown, all of us, ALL OF US, are children of God. We are all created in God’s image. This means that what gives us life, the soul God has breathed into us, is a spark of the divine. Jesus revealed and embodied this great truth. He taught that we all possess the divine spark of the Creator within us and must therefore build our lives on the assurance that we matter and we have purpose.

Our present world, as has the world in every generation, finds beguiling, haunting, and perverted ways to tell us we do not matter very much. The messages erode our sense of self.

Society classifies, values, and separates people based on power, wealth, status, race, gender, athletic ability, language, and appearance. But such categorization leads to enormous pain of all kinds.

It is essential in these shaking times inflicting great burdens on our minds and hearts that we build an unshakable sense of self that is constructed and maintained by taking this truth to heart. It is a blessed assurance. It is a great sense of rest for our souls. (John 14:27).

FOUNDATION STONE TWO: Each of us is the temple of the Creator. While this sounds like restating foundation stone one, it is not. 

Building on foundation stone one requires effort to prepare ourselves to receive the visitation of the divine in our lives. These visits give us greater strength, resilience, confidence, assurance, and reason for hope amid all things.

We must prepare ourselves to be God’s sanctuary, God’s dwelling place. In doing so our outlook is upward – if not spatially – certainly in effective, aspirational living. We have the courage to look for the good rather than spiritually stoned to death by all the rock thrown examples of what is bad and broken.

This foundation stone is critically important in our time when corrupt preachers, politicians, and all manner of theologically twisted people are proclaiming that God is to be found only in certain human constructed temples. 

In our time when such voices say, and would seek to enforce, the artificial intelligence that God is found only in evangelical temples, or within the burgeoning temples led by white, Christian Nationalists, it is essential to prepare our lives to be a sanctuary, pure and holy, tried and true. Among other things, building on this truth enables us to recognize the priesthood of all believers rather than living a life of arrogant condemnation focused on naming, shaming, and excommunicating heretics of our own defining.

FOUNDATION STONE THREE:  We are all – ALL OF US – citizens of the Kingdom of God. This great spiritual truth means that for as wonderful as this created world is, as much as the architecture of this world is magnificent, it is only one dimension of The Kingdom of God of which we are a part. 

We are all immigrants in this dimension of creation and all moving on to what is in store. There is the here and now. It is God’s gift. But Jesus revealed that there is infinitely more. 

As citizens of The Kingdom of God we cannot be detained or deported. Our citizenship in God’s Kingdom cannot be trumped. In God’s Kingdom no human ICE agents are at work to check our papers, evaluate our credentials, or decide that we are ineligible for this citizenship.

No stone upon which to build our lives is more important than this! 

Indeed, in these days when racially self-righteous and fraudulent human beings in power are defining politically expedient excuses for deportation of undocumented immigrants, we must proclaim that we are all citizens of God’s Kingdom. That puts the recognition upon us that we are all immigrants in this dimension of God’s Kingdom, and we must treat each other with respect. Jesus was and is correct. The only ultimately world-saving policy is to love our neighbors, our fellow immigrants, as ourselves.    

If our policies and actions are based FIRST on this spiritual foundation, then the result is a far different outcome than building deportation camps and empowering masked, poorly trained, badge-wearing people carrying weapons to terrorize, detain, and arrest black and brown people.

FOUNDATION STONE FOUR: There will come a time when this temple we now live in will wear out or break. But the essence of who we are is not at an end. After death to this life, we are not just a name on a stone or confined to the fading memories of those who note the marks we made in the process of living.

Jesus has put his mark on us. It is the mark of the cross and the reality of an empty tomb. We transcend the gravestone, the mausoleum, or the columbarium niche.

Suddenly we reside in God’s Spirit where, as poet Mary Louise Bringle describes, “goodness is unfading” and where “no valued deed (of our doing) will be undone.”

These are unsettling and upending times. But they will come to their welcome end. 

Building our lives on these spiritual foundation stones will enable us to walk on the shaky ground of our times seeking justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God.

Building on these spiritual foundation stones enables us to weather the present storms of life and as the storms are raging Jesus calls to say,

            STAND UP FOR ALL OTHERS. STAND BY ME.