Drinking From the ROCK

 

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

I don’t want you to forget, dear brothers and sisters, about our ancestors in the wilderness long ago.  All of them were guided by a cloud that moved ahead of them, and all of them walked through the sea on dry ground.  In the cloud and in the sea, all of them were baptized as followers of Moses.  All of them ate the same spiritual food, and all of them drank the same spiritual water.  For they drank from the spiritual rock that traveled with them, and that rock was Christ.  

1 Corinthians 10:1-3

In Exodus[1] we read the story of God’s children out in the dessert, thirsty and with no water in sight.  Their complaints were against Moses, but reached God in Heaven, and the Lord instructed Moses to strike a rock.  In answer to Moses’ stick hitting the rock, God provided a gushing fountain in the middle of a wasteland.

That moment was a harbinger of things to come…a symbol of God’s providence, miracle after miracle, until His promises all unfolded two thousand years later, at a cross on the town garbage dump, and a borrowed, but barely-used tomb. 

I have a memory (and a photo buried somewhere in thousands of old pictures) of a visit my family made to The Dessert of Maine in the 1950’s.  One would not expect to find a slice of the Sahara in New England; the Tuttle family didn’t either.  They bought that small farm in 1821, and the family abandoned it in 1890[2] because, lacking understanding of sustainable farming depleted the soil, and the underlying sand basically rose-up to cover whatever was left of their orchard.  The treetops are covered by the sand to this day.  The photo was of me, ten-years-old, lying on that sand, tongue hanging-out, watching my handful of sand fall through my fingers.  It was (and remains) my mind’s image of what it’s like to die of thirst.

There are many things necessary to human life, but food, water, and breathing are the most critical.  Wastelands are places where life has lost its way.  And the metaphor of a dessert as choosing a sinful, rebellious lifestyle is a precise descriptive of what Israel chose in the wilderness…dying of thirst for spiritual life.  They were angry at Moses, angry at God, and unable to see how parched their souls had become. 

It was going to be a long 40 years in that dessert!

For You Today 

Providing an unending water source, more than the former slaves could drink, bathe-in, or irrigate a thousand generations of corn fields, was just the beginning of seeing the gracious hand of God give all humanity the greatest of gifts, the salvation of souls.  Those Israelites drank from the rock, and He’s still giving living water today.

So, are you thirsty?

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,500 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper explore some of these:  Following the Truth  or  The Rock of Our Salvation       

Title Image: via Pixabay.com    Images without citation are in public domain.

Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation^©  

---

[1] Exodus 17:1-5

[2] Read about the Dessert of Maine

Deepening

Monday, March 30, 2020

Hear my prayer, O Lord; listen to my plea!  Answer me because you are faithful and righteous.  Don’t put your servant on trial, for no one is innocent before you.  My enemy has chased me.  He has knocked me to the ground and forces me to live in darkness like those in the grave.  I am losing all hope; I am paralyzed with fear.  I remember the days of old.  I ponder all your great works and think about what you have done.  I lift my hands to you in prayer.  I thirst for you as parched land thirsts for rain.       Interlude   Come quickly, Lord, and answer me, for my depression deepens.  Don’t turn away from me, or I will die.  Let me hear of your unfailing love each morning, for I am trusting you.  Show me where to walk, for I give myself to you.  Rescue me from my enemies, Lord; I run to you to hide me.  Teach me to do your will, for you are my God.  May your gracious Spirit lead me forward on a firm footing.  For the glory of your name, O Lord, preserve my life.  Because of your faithfulness, bring me out of this distress.  In your unfailing love, silence all my enemies and destroy all my foes, for I am your servant.  Psalm 143:1-12

Young David had been the rising star of Israel, having defeated Goliath, called to the palace to be advisor, spiritual mentor, and chief music therapist to King Saul.  When David later wrote this Psalm, he was remembering the aftermath of Saul’s paranoiac rage that drove David not only from the palace, but from any kind of life at all.  David was hounded by Saul’s armies, forced to live with the spiders and scorpions in caves, or just anywhere out of Saul’s reach.  In light of his reputation, position, calling, service and his very life hanging by a thread, we can understand the future king’s deepening into the downward spiral of depression!

If you’re one of those A-type, always up, optimistic persons who has never had a down moment, blessed with an always-full-and-running-over glass – on behalf of 99.75% of the world…you’re really annoying to the rest of us who live in reality!

Now, admittedly, that is not very pastoral sounding!  (Ya think, Russell?).  The only problem with a pastor not saying that would be an ethical disconnect from truth.  The fact remains that depression, either occasionally, or as a lifelong battle, is part of the typical experience of fallen humanity.  If you doubt that, you’re behind on your Bible reading, and/or need a reality check.  We live in an anti-depressant saturated society.  And it’s deepening!

I love old sayings (not just because I’m old – I’ve loved hearing them all my life).  One of those sayings is MISERY LOVES COMPANY – but, frankly, who wants another depressed person around when you’re already hanging on for dear life?  Answer:  just about everybody.  And with good reason; when you’re depressed who wants a Jack Russell Springer jumping up and down with a dog-toothy smile, wanting to play?  No, we want a Bassett Hound, willing to just lay next to us with body heat and a slow pulse we can feel in rhythm with our own.  We want someone who has, or is, walking where we’re drowning.  We don’t want to be told cheer up…it’s a beautiful day; we want to be understood, because whatever beauty God’s created to see out there, on our inside it’s darker than midnight!

For You Today

King David walked there, and he thought deeply about it, and gives us the kind of lifeline that brings a little refreshing rain on the parched ground of souls that have been ground down like powder and swept away with the wind of chance.  And David knows the only genuinely sane way out is the way of the upward; it’s to take the deepening sense of depression and own it before God.  Only there is the beginning of restoration.  Let’s face it, you can’t climb out of the pit; you must be led-out, by the Hand of One who has conquered it!  So, if you’re ready, He is!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO 

Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For another post on battling depression Psalm 143:  see Zombie No Longer