My God is My Rock

 

While walking the property at church , I came upon these two delicate flowers. They are truly beautiful as they stand alone in the mulch. No weeds. No grass. No other flowers in sight. As I stooped down to take a picture, I saw the garden stone nearby. The stone is a memento that celebrates a great day in the life of our congregation with the words, “God is my Rock.”

As I paused, I thought of the contrast of the rock and the flower. In one of most famous parables of Jesus, he speaks of the of the sower, the seed and the different types of soil.

“That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred,sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.”

All of us, at different times, are all these types of soil. Sometimes our lives are rocky and our soil is shallow. We are still receptive, but we cannot seem to put down deep roots. We may not be able to put our finger on it; we start strong, but then we fade. It isn’t that we don’t want to bloom and shine like the two blossoms. At times we just can’t. Hard past. Tough present. Uncertain and anxious future. Life can, at times, be rocky.

But even that image for our experience leads to good news. God is our rock. God is our firm foundation. God is the stable place to stand when times are hard.

God really is our rock, in the best sense of the image. And we know that flowers can bloom everywhere, even in the rocky places of life.

Peace.