3. The Rock

Names of God Meditations No.3: The Rock

1 Sam 2:2  “There is no one holy like the Lord; there is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.”

Psa 28:1 “To you, Lord, I call; you are my Rock.”

God, the Rock: It was Jacob who was the first one to declare that God was a rock (Gen 49:24 in his prophecy over his sons). Hannah reiterated it in her prayer of thanks in our first starter verse, and David referred to God as his rock 4 times in Psa 18 and then a number of other times in his other psalms as our second starter verse shows.

Recap: Now in the previous two studies we pointed out that all of the names of God in the Bible show us something of His characteristics or nature and after an initial realization that that was revealed through relationships, we focused on His declaration to Moses that, “I AM”, in other words, the One who always is. Now I have followed on from that declaration because the impact on us, I suggest, is to enable us to see Him as the one and only person or thing in all of existence who is unchanging and, we might say, unmovable. He is, in other words, like a rock.

Famous Rocks: Stop and think of the famous rocks of the world. In the UK we have the famous stones of Stonehenge, massive rocks. To the south is the Rock of Gibraltar, a large limestone promontory at the southern tip of Spain. In Australia there is the famous Ayers Rock, a massive sandstone rock said to be one of the largest monoliths in the world, but there are plenty of other such outcrops around the world. The biggest pile of rocks in the world (forgive the description) is Mount Everest, and to the West of Canada and the States are the Rockies. All of these rocks and mountains speak of permanence. We know in the long-term they may not be, but in our lifetimes they speak of solidity, permanence, immovability. No wonder these various people in the Bible spoke of God as ‘my rock’.

In the constantly changing and worrying world that we live in, we look around for signs of stability and there are none – except The Rock.

Everything aligned to Him: C.S.Lewis, in one of his sci-fi trilogy books, had his hero-adventurer in space, I seem to remember, where he encountered something – that I believe Lewis was conveying as an angelic being – where everything for a moment seemed to be at an angle in comparison to the ‘being’. I believe he was conveying that only God and those who represent Him are the ones who are truly in alignment with reality and the rest of us are the ones out of kilter. Only God is reality, only He is the one, true stabilizing feature in existence.

His Calming Presence: There are times when I wake in the morning, disturbed by a dream perhaps, or concerned about human affairs, and I go downstairs in that state of anxiety, and then I sit quietly before the Lord to wait on Him, and it is as if His presence becomes real in the room and suddenly all the fears, all the doubts, all the worries, evaporate away in His presence.

It is like He is a rock that IS, that is there emanating peace (and I’ll cover peace as a separate subject later on) for He is totally at peace with Himself and everything about Him radiates that sense of being utterly in control with no anxiety, no stress, no wondering; He knows, He has ultimate power and authority, He has no need to be concerned about what is happening around Him, so to speak, there is an all-seeing, all-knowing sense about Him that, linked to His unlimited power, exudes from Him, and so being in the presence of THAT, in the presence of the ‘I AM’, brings me calm.

Coastal pictures: When there are storms around the coast, we sometimes see photos of massive waves crashing against and almost hiding lighthouses, but no one bothers to photo massive waves crashing against a granite cliff for the wave, we know, will just be dissipated and the cliff-face will be unmoved. This is our God. We may turn on the TV and watch the news with a sense of foreboding as the waves of bad news crash over our conscious minds, but our Rock is never ‘submerged’ for He is always infinitely greater than the waves of public opinion, of national disasters, of the war threats of mad despots. The rumblings of mere man simply make Him laugh at their folly (read Psa 2), and the problems, difficulties, even disasters, that we bring on ourselves, don’t leave Him unmoved – for He is compassionate and aways concerned for us – but He knows, He has the answer, His grace is always available for us in whatever form we need.And so: This God who says, “I AM” is thus my rock, my stability, my security, my support as, in Him, I stand above and look down on the waves, “seated… with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” (Eph 2:6) Hallelujah!