My solid place

The landscaper who revamped our backyard is coming over today with his invoice. He spent money and time using rainbow rock to make yard care easier for us. It looks good. Landscaping is one use for rock.

Another is how rock occurs in nature; it is a solid place to stand and difficult to break apart or penetrate. When the kids play ‘rock, paper, scissors,’ rock is the winner. Even if paper could cover it up, everyone knows what even a small stone actually could do to a piece of paper!

My verse today is about a rock. It is a figurative way to describe Jesus Christ, referred to in song and Scripture as the Rock of my salvation. Someday I’m going to do a thematic Bible study and see the ways the word rock is used. Today I read only one of more than a hundred references that use it. Psalm 61:2 says:

From the end of the earth I will cry to You, when my heart is overwhelmed; lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

Jesus is a rock in the sense of being a solid and safe place to stand spiritually. He gives me a higher view too, a perspective on life that is beyond my imagination. He helps me see what God sees and how He is at work in this world. When life becomes too much for me and I’m feeling unstable and unsure, my Rock settles me and helps me know that He is taking care of me and in charge of the difficulties that challenge me.

In a discussion of what hell might be like (as if I really want to know), someone said it is all that Jesus is not. In other words, Jesus said, “I am the Light of the world” so being separated from Him forever means eternal darkness. Hell is not a party!

Jesus also said “I am the Bread of life.” That indicates that hell is eternal hunger, never feeling satisfied, literally and in other ways. Jesus is love; eternity apart from Him is being without love.

From this psalm and other places that say Jesus is the rock, then hell would have no solid place to stand, literally and figuratively. I cannot imagine feeling as if I were falling for all eternity, nor can I imagine not being sure of anything, not having a solid sense of anything. It would be a terrible emptiness and uncertainty.

Some people say hell is what a person makes of life here. If that is so, then those who do not have the Rock as a solid place to stand have only illusions and uncertainties holding them up. Jesus talked of hell as a literal place though, and after thinking about all that He is and all that I would not have if I were going to hell, I’m even more grateful that He took my punishment for sin and gave me eternal life.

Some days it feels like my feet stand on quicksand and I am overwhelmed by all sorts of things. However, the reality is that I can call on my God and He will lead me back to the certainty that Jesus is my Rock. On Him is my strong foundation where I will abide forever.