The heart not the place

Friday November 23th, Luke 21: 5 Some people were talking about the Temple and how it was decorated with beautiful stones and gifts offered to God. But Jesus said, 6 "As for these things you are looking at, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another. Every stone will be thrown down." In taking a tour in Jerusalem through the excavations along the wall, one of the things that impressed me was the size of the stones. There was one stone that was 39 feet long, 9 feet high and over 7 feet thick, solid granite. The estimated weight was over 100,000 pounds. One of the hallmarks of Herod’s walls were the size of the stones in the lower construction. If an enemy were to come against the wall, they would not be able to chip away at the stones and remove them from the wall. Jesus prediction of the wall being torn down was almost beyond belief. But Jesus is not impressed with either the grandiose pretentions of our structures nor the grandiose pretentions of our programs when accompanied with an underlying lack of Gospel passion and grace. For Jesus it would be torn down, and in time that was true. It is not the thing that holds the love of Christ, it is the heart.