Phyllis Nissila

THE STORY

 A volcano spews a molten mass atop a mountain. The lava cools, hardens, and snow blankets the mountain once again.

One day, the earth adjusts slightly and dislodges a small piece of the stone. The following day, a shard of noonday sun melts enough snow above the stone to nudge it a few feet down the mountain.

Some years later, the fiercest wind in decades whips around the mountain dishevelling layers of hard pack, shoving the stone a little more south.

Inch by inch, century by century, gravity tugs the stone down the mountainside through snow, mud, and dirt until if finally wedges tight against a scraggly stump at the tree line.

Then, one spring, a sudden surge of snow melt rattles the stone loose and it skips and clatters through the turgid flow, catapulting past thickening evergreens and around treacherous bends, riding the relentless current as both tumble sea-ward.

The water flow, now a river careening past forests, pastures, and cities, pitches the stone against other stones and snarled tree limbs and tangled roots breaking and crushing it until, a fraction of its original size, the stone comes to rest along a sandy shore as the river slows to meet the sea.

One night, in a tumult of roiling waves and crackling thunder, lightning strikes the stone, now worn to a grain of sand itself and in a split second granite becomes glass.

THE TRANSFORMATION

Through the altering power of natural elements what was once cold, dark, and dense is now warm, light, and nearly transparent. Likewise, through the power of supernatural elements—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—we are changed spiritually.

At the split second of rebirth spirits quicken and God’s current—grace—starts us on the heaven-ward adventure.

From the cold stone wilderness of our lost condition God transports us via the warmth and light of His love through the Word Made Flesh and the renewing power of the Holy Spirit that adjusts, loosens, reveals, draws, and refines through the Word made text.

Through the same power that melts granite, uproots mountains, and carves the course of the sea, dead spirits rise, see, hear, understand, and transform.

THE INVITATION

It all starts here: “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10, KJV). And Let Him take care of the rest. Or, as brother Keith put it back in ’78:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhxzwp6h_TI

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Artwork from the public domain