Speaking of Rocks

Speaking of rocks, I have a new outlook on rocks these days. On the site where I work in Iraq, there are rocks everywhere. They form our driveways, our parking areas, they fill the shop yard and they are there when I step outside my chu (short for civilian housing unit). Sidewalks here are almost non-existent. A few of the roads are asphalt. But for the most part, every where you go, there are rocks.

You learn to walk carefully on the rocks. When they roll under your feet, you learn to ride the rocks until they stop rolling. The rocks shift and scrunch under your feet. The rocks can be treacherous and dangerous if you don’t pay close attention to where you step. A twisted ankle is no fun.

Eventually you learn to look ahead for the places where the rocks have been packed down into the ground so that they are no longer loosely lying in your path. It is not in any order. There is no rhyme or reason to where the packed down rocks lie. So you meander back and forth in a zigzag pattern looking a bit like a drunken sailor trying to step on packed rocks to get to your destination. Walking in a straight line is possible but it is not easy on your feet and legs and limbs. If you are fortunate, you will find actual sand or dirt to walk in. You watch for the patches of dirt. You hope for them because they make walking easy… trouble free.

I’ve learned to dislike rocks. A lot.

Until it rains.

When the rain comes, the patches of dirt and sand become sucking holes of mud that clings to your boots like gripping hands trying to drag you down into what was once an easy path. You slip and slide in the mud and begin to look for those rocks that you once tried to avoid. Those rocks become islands of freedom from the mud. A place to keep your feet dry and clean. They turn into an easy clean path and provide the best way possible to get where you want to go. You hope and pray for rocks. What once was difficult and frustrating and inconvenient is now the very thing that protects you and makes the way safe for you.

In a way, the path of rocks is like the life we live with Jesus. A Christian walk can be rocky and slippery and we can take a misstep and be hurt while we are trying to live life as a Christian. Sometimes we travel down paths that other Christians have traveled and ’packed down’ for us. Occasionally we have to blaze our own path with Christ in order to reach the high place He is taking us. We sometimes even look to make the way easier by taking the seemingly smooth road that the world wants us to take. That easy road has all the appearance of safety and goodness. But when hard times come and the storms hit our lives, that easy road does us no good. The easy road is deceptive and will fail us every time sucking us into the mire of the world and covering us with filth. And only then do we crawl back to Him. Then we begin to look for and call upon our Rock to lift us up and clean our lives of that filth. Filth that only the Rock of Jesus can wash away.

Our Amazing Lord and God is always so faithful to forgive and set us straight again.

Like a twisted ankle, an “off the path” broken Christian is in pain and not functioning correctly. It is not always convenient to walk with Christ. It is difficult to trust in times of hardship and stress when it “appears” that nothing is going our way. Or something shiny entices us to deliberately step off the road . We have all strayed off the path in our lives and trusted the sand. But if we stay on that Rock, we will be safe and receive the reward of knowing that although we took the narrow path, we can look back down our road and have no regret.

Although I may not always choose to take the rocky path in the shop’s yard or in the parking lot, or while walking to work, I choose the Rock of Jesus for my walk through this life come rain or come shine.


"Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. "But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall." (Matthew 7:24-27)