"Quarry Life"

1st Kings 6.1, 7 NASU

“…in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel,… he began to build the house of the LORD.” 

“The house, while it was being built, was built of stone prepared at the quarry, and there was neither hammer nor axe nor any iron tool heard in the house while it was being built.”

Several years ago I previewed a piece of property for sale near a rock quarry. The location presented an obvious obstacle to any potential buyer of the home. The noise of blasting rocks, the dust of dirt access roads, the constant coming and going of dump trucks... any future owner would think hard before relocating near a quarry site.

Quarries are noisy places. Rock is blasted, broken, and crushed for use as finished materials in the construction of buildings and roads. Sand, gravel, and dimension stone come from quarries. A quarry is a desolate place where the hard work of preparing stone is completed.

Solomon spent seven years overseeing the construction of “the house of the Lord” in Jerusalem about a thousand years before Christ. The Temple of Solomon “was built of stone prepared at the quarry.” No shaping or grinding or cutting of stone took place at the building site. This preparation work was done with iron tools at the quarry. If a stone did not fit, back to the quarry it went. It was noisy at the quarry but very quiet at the Temple during every phase of its construction.

My life is a rock quarry. It’s noisy there. Sometimes I am broken and crushed and grinded. The shaping process is painful, but always with a redemptive purpose. Jesus is shaping me into a stone designed to fit perfectly in the house He is building.

“…you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house…”

1st Peter 2.5 NASU

Someday I will be finished and fully prepared to take my place of honor in the “house of the Lord.” I will no longer be required to bear the “hammer nor axe nor any iron tool” of hard change. I will be presented to God “complete in Christ” (Colossians 1.28). Until then I can and will endure the dust, the noise, and the temporary and redemptive suffering of my quarry life on earth.