Skipping stones or river rocks

You can call yourself a Christian in America and not worry about being committed or being a disciple. You may have beliefs but not convictions.

This morning I was thinking about the cultural Christianity we observe in this country and how it can come in conflict with the practice of discipleship at times. Without getting into specifics, someone was discouraged at work today about the "unchristian" behavior of christian colleagues. The gist of the problem boiled down to cultural christianity. I was thinking about a stone skimming the surface of the stream, so to speak, and never taking the time to dive under into the depths of the water. As long as a stone is skipping the surface of the water it will never become part of the ecosystem and allow the water forces to work on it, tumbling and rolling it under the surface below. The stone will never diminish in time, in size and stature as parts of its elements dissolve becoming part of the nourishing liquid soup; calling to mind John the Baptist saying he must increase and I must decrease, if it remains on the surface or stays on the shorline. The algae will never have a chance to gather on it, baby fish will never find shelter behind it's shadow, it will just be a skipping stone, barely even wet.

Wouldn't you want to be drenched with water, the rough edges smoothed away by the roiling action of the water currents?Wouldn't you want to shelter the fry and the tadpoles as they grow and accumulate the algae to feed them? I think about the rough places made plain spoken poetically about in Isaiah and I think of stones being polished by the action of water, lively stones, smooth stones, stones not easily "offended" any longer when they are bumped into one another. Why you barely notice a scratch as all the sharp protruberances were knocked and smoothed off long ago.