Living stones

When I was a child exploring my Grandad's greenhouse in Lincolnshire I used to be fascinated by the weird and wonderful plants he grew. "Caterpillar plants" - brightly coloured squiggles of furriness balancing on top of green leaves. "Sensitive plants" (mimosa) whose leaves would fold up shyly when touched but whose thorns I learned to respect when I encountered them years later growing as weeds on the side of tracks in Papua New Guinea. My favourites though were the living stones (lithops).

These aren't the most exciting of plants but in their own way each is beautiful, knobbly yet smooth, growing imperceptibly until new leaves push up, splitting and casting off the old ones which wither, shrivel and die (though the plant is able to absorb nutrients from the old leaves - nothing goes to waste).  Growth and life requiring putting off the old to make space for the new.

1 Peter 2:5 talks about believers being living stones (although Peter's thinking about building a spiritual temple rather than filling a greenhouse).

I can feel an affinity with the lithops.

Sometimes maturity and change don't seem to be happening at all. Sometimes it feels as if the new leaves the Lord's wanting to bring forth are having to struggle through and physically split the engrained habits and attitudes that are preventing growth. Like the lithops with its old leaves, absorbing lessons from experience as we put off what needs to be jettisoned does make us stronger. It's not comfortable but sometimes the old has to be cast off to shrivel and die to enable something better to thrive.

Years can go by and nothing much seems to be happening. A bit of a change, a couple of new leaves, but from the outside things look much the same. Then, unexpectedly, the stone produces a flower. Yellow, pink, white, it bursts forth - there's been a lot going on undetected.

Sometimes we don't notice what God's doing in ourselves or in other people. Sometimes he seems to take an awfully long time to do anything and we think nothing is happening. Then, at just the right time, something amazing emerges.