When life becomes chaotic, we can find stability in God the rock. The one who created the heavens and the earth is the same one who desires to be a mighty fortress for us. And so that we can see this promise clearly, God sends Jesus to save us and hold us together.
A Methodist pastor named Harley Camden took an evening walk along the bank of the Occoquan River. The sun had set, but there was still enough light to illuminate the charcoal gray outcroppings of rock that rose up from the edge of the river. Harley knew that these Virginia rocks were old, formed about three hundred million years ago.
Harley’s life was in chaos, and he needed to find some stability. Putting his hands on a rock by the roadside, he began to make a connection with something much bigger than himself. Sitting down on the rock, he had the strange sensation that his center of gravity was moving down, down, down ... past his shoulders and chest and waist, and deep into the stone beneath him.
What, he wondered, had this massive rock witnessed as it looked over the Town of Occoquan? Native Americans and settlers, Revolutionary soldiers and Redcoats, slave-owners and abolitionists, blacks and whites, Jews and Christians and Muslims. The rocks had seen it all, standing silently above the fading light on the Occoquan River.
Pulling out his smartphone, Harley called up a psalm, “The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer, my God, my rock in whom I take refuge.” Harley read it, and then repeated it. Get outside your head, he thought to himself, let yourself rest in the Lord of the rock. This is what is really real, he realized, a fortress that can stand strong against any assault. Lean on this, rely on this — the rock in which you can take refuge. “The LORD is my rock, my fortress, and my deliverer,” Harley repeated to himself, over and over again.1,2
Our God is a Rocky God
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