The Rejected Stone ofEli Whitney Park

In 2019, city planners in Hamden, Connecticut, nearly demolished a crumbling granite wall along Eli Whitney Park. The stones were uneven, cracked, deemed unusable for the modern renovation. One mason, Ray Thibodeau, a third-generation stoneworker, walked the site and stopped at a massive irregular block the demolition crew had flagged for disposal. "That's your cornerstone," he told them. Everyone thought he was crazy.

Ray spent three days cleaning and examining that stone. Beneath decades of grime, he found it was the original 1798 foundation block from Whitney's armory — the very stone on which the entire industrial complex had first been built. What the contractors saw as rubble, Ray recognized as the most historically significant piece on the property. That rejected stone became the literal and symbolic cornerstone of the restored park, now a gathering place for the whole community.

Psalm 118 rings with this same stunning reversal. The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The Almighty specializes in taking what the world discards — the overlooked, the written-off, the left-for-dead — and making it the foundation of something eternal. The psalmist nearly died but lived to tell the story. What looked like the end became the beginning.

This is the day the Lord has made. Every morning you wake up still breathing is proof that God is not finished building with the stones others threw away.