The Brick They Almost Threw Away

In 2014, a demolition crew in downtown Savannah, Georgia, was tearing down a condemned cotton warehouse when foreman Marcus Delaine noticed something odd. Buried beneath crumbling plaster, he found rows of original 1850s Savannah gray bricks — a building material so rare that preservationists had spent years searching for surviving examples. The contractor had already scheduled a dumpster. Those bricks were hours from a landfill.

Marcus made a phone call. Within a week, those rejected bricks became the literal cornerstone material for the restoration of a historic African American church on Cuyler Street — a congregation that had been praying for two years for the means to rebuild.

The psalmist knew this pattern long before Savannah existed. "The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone" (Psalm 118:22). What the powerful discard, the Almighty repurposes. What the world condemns to the rubbish heap, God sets at the foundation.

This is the gospel in miniature. The One crucified outside the city walls — rejected, discarded, left for dead — became the cornerstone of everything. And the same God who raised that Stone takes the broken, overlooked pieces of your life and builds something that will stand.

No wonder the psalmist can't contain himself: "This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it." When you've watched God turn rejection into restoration, praise isn't an obligation. It's the only reasonable response.