Devotion for Friday, April 3, The Fifth Week in Lent
1 Corinthians 3:9 | You are God’s field, God’s building.
Metaphor. What does it have to do with truth? You and I are a field. This means that God’s Word is able to grow inside us. We are a passive entity here, receiving the seed and allowing it room to grow. God’s work in me is going on all the time, all my life. He is “not finished with me yet” and is generally using my sorrows and deprivations—my thorns!—as the richest soil for growth. I am a plot in which the fruits of love are coming alive. Jesus often used this metaphor of the soil and the seed.
I am also God’s building. He is the builder, cementing together the pieces. He is building something whole from the diverse component parts of my being. What are the characteristics of a building? Again, Jesus told us (Matthew 7:24–25): The building is founded on a rock (unlike the House of Usher). It withstands the storms because its foundation is firm. It holds.
These metaphors portray my life as a passive thing, a field made fertile by adversity and reversal, a field created to receive. And also a house, a dwelling place for God, who looks out, through my visage and my eyes, from a secure, beloved—“Christened”—personality.
PRAYER
Lord, help us to be more like fertile soil
and more like a solid house.