This morning we met in a very wet bandstand, back for the first time since the floods. We had a stone of choice to hold throughout our time together and used the words of John Bell’s ‘Three Stone Meditations’ from his book ‘He was in the world’ (Wildgoose publications).
For copyright reasons I won’t reproduce it but the first meditation began our worship focussing upon God’s creation of the stone we held.
After that I shared a reading from the brilliant Bryan Stevenson’s ‘Just Mercy’ where he speaks of stone-catching rather than stone-throwing (a notion arising from the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery). Rather than joining in with throwing stones, we are called to catch them – defending the attacked and letting them find a place to lean – to find solace and comfort and acceptance…
This was followed by a confession I had written for last week (Remembrance Sunday):

As we remember the horror of war and capacity of humanity to hate and to kill, we turn to our Creator to acknowledge our own failings…

God our Creator,
We confess how far we have fallen from your call to be characterised by love.
Forgive us for the times when we have participated in that which fuels factionalism;
When we have labelled and dismissed others as if they were less than us;
When we have leapt to conclusions about others and been too quick to judge.
Forgive us for when we have intentionally and unintentionally used words as weapons
And when we have harboured unforgiveness for wounds inflicted on us.
We have failed to see others as more than the things we dislike about them
We have been blind to seeing everyone as bearing your image and loved by you.
We see the seeds of violence and war in ourselves
Lord have mercy.
Raise us up to be more self-aware,
To be peacemakers and peace-brokers
To learn generosity of heart and to follow the example of Jesus
And this we ask that your kingdom might come – in us and through us
Amen. Amen.

The second part of John Bell’s meditation focuses on the stone the builders rejected and rather than intersperse sections with sung responses we had silent prayer for related issues suggested by each. The final meditation focuses on us receiving the invitation by God to come as living stones. This fitted easily with the sharing of bread and wine.
We finished by laying down our stones at the foot of the cross and perhaps laying down stones we might otherwise have thrown in the coming week, allowing our empty hands to be open to catch a few instead! Two books used to day that I cannot recommend more highly – do read them!