The Rock

Trust in the Lord always, for the Lord God is the eternal Rock.

Isaiah 26:4 (NLT)

Many moons ago, we owned a home in a brand-new subdivision on a ridgeline that overlooked a bunch of farms. This subdivision was built on top of an old rock quarry. It made the foundation of the subdivision very strong, but also very irritating. You see, our house didn’t come with any landscaping – no grass, no flower beds – just dirt. It was up to me to install the landscaping. We wanted half-an-acre of lawn which would require a sprinkler system. So, I began to carve ditches in the front and backyards to lay the sprinkler pipes. There was only one problem. I kept running into a lot of rock (Duh!). About every two feet, the ditch-making machine would jump and spark as a large rock was found. I would have to dig down and remove it by hand. A job that should have taken an afternoon took me three weekends. It was frustrating. It was infuriating. But, I eventually got the lines in.

For homeowners, rock can be a source of peace and a source of frustration. It’s no different when it comes to God. Yes, you read that correctly. God can be frustrating sometimes. As our verse today states, “the Lord God is the eternal Rock.” In other words, He is large and immoveable. Nothing can dislodge God once He has declared something.

His immovability should give us peace. For example, when Jesus declared, “It is finished” from the cross, the work of salvation for humanity was complete. There is no one in the universe that can take that away. The Rock has spoken. The Rock is immovable.

However, that same immovability can frustrate. For example, when Jesus preached His famous Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7), He declared that even looking at another person with lust is the same as adultery. That truth can cause frustration for those of us who fall prey to that particular temptation. Note, the frustration isn’t with the command. Rather, the frustration is with our inability to follow it. Yet, the command stands. The Rock has spoken.

However, this frustration has a purpose. God is trying to turn a sinful human into a rock, just like Him. To do so, we need to learn how to be like a rock. I praise God for the firm foundation He creates in my life. And, I also praise Him for the frustration, because it means He is shaping me into a rock as well – immovable in my faith in Jesus Christ and His Kingdom.