I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about rocks. And looking at rocks. And carrying rocks. And digging up rocks. And moving rocks. And singing about rocks. And crushing spiders and scorpions with rocks. And sitting on rocks. And dropping rocks. But mostly just thinking about rocks. I mean, after spending a week moving rocks for my teams ministry, it makes sense that all my brain can think about is rocks, right?
Let me back up a bit and tell you what I’ve been up to during my time in Ecuador. My team has been assigned to work with a ministry called Pan De Vida during the two months we will be in Ecuador. Pan De Vida is one of the most amazing organizations I’ve ever seen. They serve a meal to an average of 200 people twice a week, teach women how to sew so they can start their own businesses, worship and teach the word of God to the people who come to them for help, provide school supplies and clothing to families, hold activities for the neighborhood kids, and help build houses for the people in their community.
This past week my team and I spent four days working on the construction of one of these houses. But this particular house, and the family who will be living in it, is special to everyone at Pan De Vida. This house is for the family of the man who used to oversee all of Pan De Vida’s construction projects. Over the summer, his house burned down, and then the week my squad arrived, he unexpectedly passed away. The family was left without a house, a husband, and a father. It was a huge honor to be able to help this family during their time of need and experience the joy and love they continued to cling to in their time of sadness.
Remembering this families strength helped me keep up my own strength during the week. Yes, at times it was hard and hot and dusty. Yes, at times I didn’t feel like moving any more rocks. Yes, at times I wanted to find and kill every sand flea within a mile radius. Yet I continued to move rocks. I continued to dig through the weeds to get to the rocks beneath them. I continued to fill and empty wheelbarrows. I continued to carry bags of rocks down the hill. And everyday I continued to find more joy. I spent hours laughing with my teammates about funny stories from high school proms and screamed with them when a scorpion or spider scurried out from beneath a rock. I gave piggy back rides and splashed my hands in a bucket of water with the family’s kids. I befriended a pig, smiled at a lot of stray dogs, and raced my friend up the hill after emptying our buckets of rocks (got to work off all those croissants somehow). I laughed when we sat down for lunch and cracked passion fruits on our foreheads to try them for the first time. I danced with my teammates to make the family laugh, then invited them to dance with us. And I thought a lot about rocks.
When I think about rocks I think about the song “On Christ the solid rock I stand…” Maybe it’s because my teammates and I sang this song over and over while we moved rocks this week. Or maybe it’s because it’s something I need to remind myself of. Christ is a solid rock, build your house on the rock, God is our strong rock…as Christians we’ve been taught to think of our God as a rock, but what does that really mean? To me, rocks are strong, steady, solid. When something is set in stone, it means it’s unmovable, it can’t be shaken. Our God is like that. In fact, everything about him is like that. He can’t be shaken. His promises can’t be shaken. His people can’t be shaken.
Since arriving in Ecuador, I’ve been reading through the book of Genesis. I felt like God was asking me to start at the beginning of the bible; to relearn who he is; to be open to discover new things about him. And if Genesis is a book about anything, it’s about what a steady rock God is. Nearly every chapter has some example of a promise or a blessing that will surely happen. I started to underline every time the word surely shows up throughout Genesis. Surely I will bless you. Surely I will be with you. Surely I will protect you. Surely I will keep my covenant with you. Surely I have heard your prayer. Surely I will come to your aid. God never says he’ll “maybe” be with us. He doesn’t say he’ll “maybe” love us. He isn’t going to “maybe” hear our prayers. He will do all of those things. He’s our rock, and once we decide to be rooted in him, we can trust that what he says, what he promises, and what he blesses will never be shaken.
So yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about rocks. And maybe at the beginning of this blog that sentence meant nothing to you. But hey, maybe now you’ll start thinking about rocks too. And maybe you’ll discover they mean something to you too.
Pictures by Aly Badinger and Erin Andersen
If you want to find out more about what we’ve been learning here in Ecuador, go ahead and read the rest of my teammates blogs – you can find them on the left sidebar of my blog.
