Living stones

[puddleglum]

The stones used in Solomon’s temple were carved at the place from which they were taken, not at the place where the temple was being built.

When the house was built, it was with stone prepared at the quarry, so that neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron was heard in the house while it was being built.
1 Kings 6:7 ESV

Imagine that these stones were alive. How might they have felt about what was being done to them?

They were removed from a comfortable existence in the quarry and subjected to a painful process of having parts of themselves cut off. They had no idea why this was happening because they were too far from the construction site to see that a temple was being built. It would seem that they were being tortured for absolutely no reason.

After the work on them was finished they were taken to where the temple was being built and placed in the position they had been prepared for. They would discover that the fit exactly into their place in the temple. They would realize that the pain they had endured while still in the quarry had been intended for exactly this purpose.

The stones used in the temple were inanimate and had no feelings but today God is in the process of constructing a building out of stones that are living.

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 2:4-5 ESV

If you are a believer in Jesus Christ you are one of these stones. As long as we are in this world we will experience suffering.

Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.
Acts 14:22 ESV

At times we all wonder why so many bad things happen to us. God tells us that the things that seem bad are really intended for our good.

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Romans 5:3-5 ESV

Our sufferings are the tools God uses to shape us so that we will fit into our intended place in the spiritual house he is building. When his work is done we will understand that every bad thing that ever happened to us was necessary to prepare us for our final destiny.