Endurance
Day 15
Image courtesy of Rebecca Webb Wilson, Hawkeye Nature Photography
I love you, O LORD, my strength,
O LORD, my stronghold, my crag, and my haven. —Psalm 18:1
I love rocks. Wherever I go, they are my favorite souvenirs. I’ve hauled them home from all over, and more than once I’ve had a friend mail a box of them to me when they were too heavy or too many to bring on the plane. Once I packed a piece of Hawaiian lava in my suitcase, which I had to explain when I went through airport security. I was afraid that it would be taken away, but the security guy just shook his head and let me go.
I have a fist-sized rock from the Sea of Galilee and a heart-shaped rock from a wild coast in Nova Scotia. My grandchildren play with the smooth, round pebbles when they make fairy houses. The bigger ones are heaped in artful (I hope) piles in my garden. I’ve used some as teaching tools, given many away, commissioned a few to be paperweights.
Sometimes I wonder about the lives of the rocks I’ve collected. How old they are, where they’ve been, whether anyone has ever touched them before. I wonder if they know how beautiful they are. If nothing else, rocks are enduring, which is why they so often represent the timelessness of God. I hold a rock in my hand and know I hold a piece of God’s own life.
I know too that in much the same way, I am held in God’s hand. So are you. No matter what you have suffered, no matter what you have lost or thrown away, no matter how deep your hurt. It may not sound like much, to be held this way, and I’ll admit to moments of despair when that assurance didn’t help. But even our deepest doubts, our pains that cannot be soothed, our crazed rants about the unfairness of it all—even these things are held in the steady hand of God.
Next time you take a walk along a lakeshore or seaside, look for a rock that is asking to be picked up. It may only be forty or so million years old—a youngster—still in need of refining. Or maybe it is the original Rock of Ages, made lovely through its ordeals. As you hold it, know that all the strength of heaven is available to you. You are held. You will endure.
O God, help me remember that your strength is the only strength I need. Amen.