)
Today's meditation
)
In stone
Deuteronomy 9:4-12: And the Lord gave me the two stone tablets written with the finger of God; on them were all the words that the Lord had spoken to you at the mountain out of the fire on the day of the assembly.
I believe the phrase “written in stone” originates in the Scripture about God’s giving the commandments written on stone tablets. But even stone can be broken or altered, so it seems that God would speak in a way even more lasting than by writing in stone.
When Moses came down the mountain with the stone tablets, he carried the law as humans could best understand it at the time. It seemed permanent and irrevocable, as the people couldn’t imagine changing something “written with the finger of God.” The centrality of those commandments remains with us today, but even more central to God is loving forgiveness.
Because we live in a physical, transitory world, we equate “permanent” with “eternal.” But the eternal refers to something which cannot be altered because it doesn’t exist in time and in the temporal world.
God forgives even when we break a commandment given in stone. The law remains, but God decides how to deal with us when we break it. Even when we break the most important of God’s commandments, we may be forgiven and welcomed back into God’s presence, if we repent.
So in the sense of God’s forgiveness, nothing we do—even in our misguided sin—remains eternally written in stone.
Psalm 45; Hebrews 3:1-11; John 2:13-22
Copyright 2025 by Carol Mead. For noncommercial use and sharing only. For more information on this ministry, and on a free subscription to these meditations, please contact the author by email (thenewmead@yahoo.com).
I believe the phrase “written in stone” originates in the Scripture about God’s giving the commandments written on stone tablets. But even stone can be broken or altered, so it seems that God would speak in a way even more lasting than by writing in stone.
When Moses came down the mountain with the stone tablets, he carried the law as humans could best understand it at the time. It seemed permanent and irrevocable, as the people couldn’t imagine changing something “written with the finger of God.” The centrality of those commandments remains with us today, but even more central to God is loving forgiveness.
Because we live in a physical, transitory world, we equate “permanent” with “eternal.” But the eternal refers to something which cannot be altered because it doesn’t exist in time and in the temporal world.
God forgives even when we break a commandment given in stone. The law remains, but God decides how to deal with us when we break it. Even when we break the most important of God’s commandments, we may be forgiven and welcomed back into God’s presence, if we repent.
So in the sense of God’s forgiveness, nothing we do—even in our misguided sin—remains eternally written in stone.
Psalm 45; Hebrews 3:1-11; John 2:13-22
Copyright 2025 by Carol Mead. For noncommercial use and sharing only. For more information on this ministry, and on a free subscription to these meditations, please contact the author by email (thenewmead@yahoo.com).