Scripture: Psalm 18:2 – “The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.”
I think that rocks sometimes get a bad reputation. When I go out for walks, I sometimes must stop to gets rocks out of my shoe. When I am planting trees or digging for posts, rocks make my task almost impossible to perform. And rocks are generally uninteresting compared with brilliant flowers, playful animals, murmuring steams, rolling oceans, and majestic sunsets. We can see God in this kind of nature, the beautiful and the majestic. Perhaps a mighty mountain is an appropriate way of understanding God, but not a rock.
Yet even though God is understood as invisible and beyond all human comprehension, a common metaphor for God in the bible is the rock. Psalm 18 says, “The Lord is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.” God is like a rock because God is powerful and resistant and protective. A stony God is one behind whom we can hide amid all the storms and troubles of life.
Rocks are often overlooked. Imagine yourself out in a high place looking out over a valley. We see the clouds and feel the cool breeze. You look out over hills and trees and rivers, over homes and farms. From that height you can feel isolated from the noise of the world and get a sense of peace and perspective that allows you to reconnect with God. But none of that would be possible without the rocky ground under you, the stone that is literally beneath your notice. Like these rocks, God supports us and empowers us in ways we cannot see, ways that are all too easy to ignore.
And perhaps there is even something divine in those pebbles and stones which chip spades and shovels. God is insistent and even annoying at times, reminding us of a reality of connection that we cannot ignore when we want to be thinking of our own tasks. When our heads are in the clouds or our sense of our own importance is growing out of control, a stubborn stone in our shoes reminds us that we are mortal and that we might learn more by connecting with the world than by trying to flee from it or overcome it.
So, in your flights of fancy this coming holiday weekend, remember that it is the rocks beneath you that might remind you the most of God’s power and love.
Prayer: God, help me to see your presence in everything around me, great and small, so that I may know your love and grace. Amen.
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