Shadows stretch across the courtyard in the year 515 b.c. You stand in a dim alleyway where the scent of melting pitch mingles with the sharp clatter of bronze hammers striking stone. A silversmith sits cross-legged on a woven reed mat. He files the edges of a newly cast three-inch figure. Silver shavings fall like pale snow against the hardened earth. The miniature statue stares blankly ahead. Its mouth hangs permanently open. No breath escapes its rigid lips.

Beyond this cramped workshop the Creator acts with vigorous and uncontained power. He stretches out the vast evening sky as a canopy and sends sudden torrential rains to soak parched valleys. He does not sit stiffly on a wooden shelf. He reaches out a shielding arm to steady those who stumble in the blinding storm. The unseen Architect witnesses the intricate struggles of the poor. He remembers his people. He leaves acres of newly sprouted wheat and the rich taste of fresh bread in his wake.

Notice the silver shavings scattered around the craftsman. People continually try to sculpt their own security from the remnants of their labor. The impulse remains to construct rigid and unfeeling totems out of modern currencies or polished reputations. The ancient temptation endures to expect these cold creations to provide rescue when distress strikes. Yet a steel vault containing twenty years of wages possesses the same unfeeling hands and deaf ears as the ancient silver statues. Such things offer no comfort when the long night falls.

The carved mouth of the idol remains eternally mute. A sculpted throat cannot utter a single word of solace or instruction. Those who pour their souls into shaping lifeless things slowly take on the same hollow rigidity. They become stiff and unresponsive to the vibrant pulse of actual life. The dead offer no praise. They sink into a permanent quiet.

A life anchored to dead stone yields a petrified heart. True vitality flows from the unseen Architect who handed the teeming earth over to humanity to cultivate and cherish. You watch the silversmith sweep his precious flakes into a pile entirely unaware of the boundless living sky arching just beyond his narrow roof.