The Parable of the Willful Stones by Davin Dahlgren, May 1996 The kingdom of God is like a house which a certain man began to build. He had very good blueprints of an excellent plan. He poured a foundation and started placing choice stones on the foundation where his plan called for them to be. As the house started to take shape, some of the stones became dissatisfied with the positions in which the master builder had placed them. They began to shift themselves into new positions, according to their own ideas of how the house should be built. Many of them dragged other stones with them into their new positions. Soon, instead of one perfect house, there were many smaller, unevenly spaced houses which more closely resembled mere piles of rocks. Some of the new piles were not even on the foundation at all; instead they called to the others to be more open minded about their positioning. The other piles adamantly insisted that each of them was more closely aligned with the master builder's original plan, and that all who were not joined with them were not part of the same building. When the man saw these stones had aligned themselves differently, he took hold of them and pulled on them to move them back in line with his blueprints. Each stone he touched steadfastly refused to be moved. Though he pushed and pulled and worked very hard, those stones were convinced that they had come up with a much better design. At last, he grasped a rod of iron which he kept nearby and smashed the recalcitrant stones into powder. The powder was then cleared away and mixed with the cement which was to fill in the cracks between the newer stones which the builder brought to replace them. [Return to Spiritual Studies]