Photo by Marius Venter on Pexels.com

Photo by Samuel Silitonga on Pexels.com

Rocks, big rocks, keep falling, but not from the skies, like meteorites. These particular rocks keep cascading down mountains, and they will not stop plummeting onto interstate 40 in North Carolina, especially when the rain refuses to stop. Those incidents on that highway have a lengthy history. In the mid-80s, a major rock slide closed two tunnels.  In July 1997, two people were injured when their vehicle ran into a boulder. In 2009, shortly after 2 a.m., a rock slide occurred outside Asheville, North Carolina. Drivers reported then, that some of the rocks were the size of a “garage”! In 2019, the rocks fell again, closing east and west lanes.

Some rocks are movable, some are not. Consider the Rock of Gibraltar, found near the southwestern tip of Europe, on the Iberian Peninsula. Specifically, it is located in the British overseas territory of Gibraltar. The closest countries are Spain to the north and Morocco (in North Africa) to the south. It is a single massive stone, mainly full of limestone, about 1,400 feet tall, with a circumference of about 10 miles, surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea. Now that is an immovable rock!

We tend to idolize men and women who appear to have the faith of Gibraltar. Their faith seems immovable, but we don’t know where they have been. We don’t know what trials they have weathered. We don’t know what they have lived through. From Streams in the Desert, L.B. Cowman wrote:

“When you see a spiritual giant, think of the road over which he has traveled, not the sunny lane where wildflowers ever bloom, but a steep, rocky narrow pathway where the blasts of hell will almost blow you off your feet!  God of the sun and rain, Thou who dost measure the weight of wind, fit us for stress and strain!”

Your problems may be falling all around you, just like your faith. Practical wisdom from Tony Evans is fitting here. From Detours he writes,

“God will often let us hit rock bottom so we will discover that He is the rock at the bottom.”

God’s promises always have a way of lifting our spirits from under the load of our circumstances, if we will believe them, as we pull them from our memory banks. Isaiah declares: “Trust in the Lord always, for the Lord God is the eternal Rock.” (26:4, NLT)

Evans continues from Detours:

“When you are going through a trial and you feel the pressure of life caving in around you, how much of God comes out? Or is it cussing, fussing, complaining, and blaming that comes out instead? Why are those things coming out? Because that is what you are full of.”

As you begin, or continue your day, why not type the verse stated above in your phone, or write it down on an index card, or on a post-it note.  Then, you can take God’s promise into your day, as the pulverizing circumstances come.

other pictures (me under a rock & book) courtesy of “Nelson & his Nikon”