The Rocks Will Speak...

We purchased a 2 acre lot next to our home... more to prevent an intrusion on our tranquility than anything... and lately we have been clearing some of the considerable dead-fall, trimming back treacherous, dead juniper branches, and killing the bountiful, lush poison ivy. The Texas Hill Country is beautiful, but is an uncanny combination of everything mean in Nature from both east and central Texas; prickly pear, yucca, barrel cactus, sumac, sticker vines, poison ivy, scorpions, copperheads, coral snakes and rattlesnakes... Never the less, I am like a city kid at summer camp, exploring its limitless mysteries.

I found an ancient triangular hearth built into the ground on the added acreage... and a few arrowheads and other ancient tools, and concluded that the land was once an Indian campground. And it probably was. But then, again on the new acreage, I found this peculiar, squared stone... too big for me to move by myself... a veritable cornerstone, resting for God knows how many years on the edge of our mesa, a rough geometric marker that suggested that people who worked stone had once been here. And that suggested Europeans, although Native Americans did build large structures out of stone in New Mexico and Arizona. This thing just said, “I am the only evidence of long-forgotten pioneers.”

They could have been Spanish missionaries, or Conquistadors, or way over-confident American “filibusters” starting an outpost. Anyway, this heavy, squared stone was sleeping deep in the brush, protected by a stand of poison ivy about six feet tall.

Perhaps a stonemason intended to build here... and something changed their plans. The stone would have been too heavy to relocate... so it was abandoned. Or perhaps there was a tragedy which changed their plans... and rather than being the beginning of something, it became the marker for the end of something... and it became a makeshift grave marker. Or maybe it is an old property marker... Or even all three. The answer may lie within a half-dozen strange mounds along the edge of the mesa... one straddled by some anciently dead mountain junipers, which sprouted, lived for a hundred years and then died a long, long time ago, all after the mound was made. It is marked by a rhomboidal limestone foot marker...

When I discovered the crudely worked stones, I got kind of excited... if only they could talk. But they might have told me of deadly confrontations with Comanches, or Mexican soldiers, or smallpox. If I am right, the mounds represent a small graveyard... for an ill-fated party of frontiersmen. Maybe a family; but strategically, lovingly placed in a beautiful spot overlooking the Nolan Valley, long before there were towns or cemeteries. Maybe before there was a Texas. And somebody found a suitable stone for their beloved, fallen patriarch, and squared it up, and hauled it up to the top of the mesa, and put it on this person's final resting place. A hard place to live... but a lovely spot to spend eternity.

Or maybe, on a more positive note, a nameless father of Texas placed it as his “ebeneezer stone.” Ebeneezer stones, basically monuments, were recorded in the Bible, where great men placed memorial stones to commemorate a great historic event, one where the positive outcome was attributed to Divine intervention...

I can't even sing completely through one of my favorite songs which mentions the ebeneezer stone... (Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing) It literally chokes me up every time I hear it. In my mind, and it is probably just my imagination, the first time I ever heard it was while standing next to my grandfather at the funeral of his favorite aunt, at his home church in Bradley County, Arkansas, and watching him sing it as his shameless tears whetted the floor. The name of the church? Ebeneezer Baptist Church. Planted memorial stones were part of his ancient Scot-Irish heritage, going way beck to the Celts, and their dolmens and such. People have left or planted stones to leave a lasting mark on this changing planet since the beginning. Some were huge, like at Stonehenge- but most were like this...

So now I look forward to occasionally visiting the old cornerstone, and studying and wondering about it... and meditating. It sits on an angle... almost as if it had sunk a little, or once been a standing ebeneezer stone and gradually fell over. But it is perfect now, just the way it is. **************************************************************************************************** There is something about a tangible relic to help abstract things make more sense. That old rock was hewn and planted so long ago... and nobody ever repurposed it, nobody ever moved it, (nobody could lift it!) nobody even knew it existed. But at one time, to someone, for a day or so, it was the most important project in the valley. It may have been intended, God willing, to be the cornerstone of a fortress, or it may have marked the grave of an Hidalgo, a Spanish Nobleman. But God allowed whatever it was to become a mystery, an unwritten footnote in history. A discarded cornerstone.

Or maybe, Nature just made a square rock, and it has always been there. Whatever the case, there are thousands of rocks on the earth with a similar mystery, with similarly intriguing and yet unknown stories. But I don't believe that the stone just happened. It had one meaning when it was made, and now it has another, to the one who found it. Ever since I learned about that very first sign above, I have learned to watch for messages from my Creator...

Hewn stones kind of speak to me. Especially ones that are associated with some historic place... some long-forgotten happening. I love to make up stories to explain them... But the Bible actually provides great references and allusions to memorial stones. Joshua had twelve stones placed in the Jordan, one for each tribe, as memorials for when Israel crossed the river, but the prophet Samuel is credited with raising the first official “ebeneezer,” translated as stone of help, as a reminder of God's powerful assistance in Israel's survival and victory against the Philistines. But neither of them ever heard these words... a relatively contemporary folk song, the one that always gets to me: **************************************************************************************************** Come Thou Fount of every blessing Tune my heart to sing Thy grace; ************************************************************************************************* Streams of mercy, never ceasing, Call for songs of loudest praise ************************************************************************************************** Teach me some melodious sonnet, Sung by flaming tongues above. *************************************************************************************************** Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it, Mount of God's unchanging love. *************************************************************************************************** Here I raise my Ebeneezer; Hither by Thy help I'm come; *************************************************************************************************** And I hope, by Thy good pleasure, Safely to arrive at home. *************************************************************************************************** Jesus sought me when a stranger, Wandering from the fold of God; **************************************************************************************************** He, to rescue me from danger, Interposed His precious blood. **************************************************************************************************** O to grace how great a debtor Daily I'm constrained to be! **************************************************************************************************** Let that grace now like a fetter, Bind my wandering heart to Thee. **************************************************************************************************** Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, Prone to leave the God I love; **************************************************************************************************** Here's my heart, O take and seal it, Seal it for Thy courts above. **************************************************************************************************** **************************************************************************************************** Yes... prone to wander. Prone to leave the God I love. And that is partly why we all need to plant an ebeneezer stone. It is a marker in your life to represent your gratitude and commitment to God. It means that the same God who made this incredible world can be called upon and trusted in our lives. I was lazy, so I just adopted a boulder (below)... I call it my prayer rock.

But I know what you are asking right now... Russell, that is a nice song, but what in the heck is a fetter? I knew you were wondering... it is a restraint... you know like a shackle or a chain. Slave chains were fetters. And this song is asking God to chain Himself to us! Or at least to our hearts. Imaginary chains... And I believe that a person can raise an ebeneezer in his heart as well. **************************************************************************************************** But this stone represents even more to me than an ebeneezer, as great as that was, or could be. Even with all of that great Old Testament symbolism, which spoke of planted stones as reminders, there is something greater in the stone... an Eternal, personal challenge. **************************************************************************************************** Because Jesus spoke of himself... as a the “cornerstone which the builders had rejected.” And ultimately that is what this stone means to me, sitting in a timeless jungle, abandoned and unused. It is still an ebeneezer, reminding those who come upon it that things never go as planned, tragedy sometimes marks life like the seasons... and in the end no aspiration, no achievement really matters- only what we individually decide to do with that Cornerstone. The “Chief Cornerstone.” Did we elect to build on it... or did we reject it and trust in something else? Is it laying askew in the forest of our hearts?

So many ebeneezers dot the planet... evidence of power schemes and grand visions and good intentions, many of their stories lost forever. But somehow, the legend, the history, the truth of the Rejected Cornerstone still lives. And that shady spot in my yard now has become hallowed ground to me... almost Holy. It's as if the Lord... Jesus, the Creator of the Universe and the Savior of my soul, knew all of this, all along... and arranged it, and brought us here, to give us a special home... with a special message from Christ, to be discovered nestled in the woods... Waiting... Perhaps after centuries... Knowing that I would have to kill that horrible poison ivy, and as it cleared out the stone would emerge. And, well, speak to me. **************************************************************************************************** When I see that stone... the scriptures below line up to explain what I feel running through my mind: You see, the predictions of the prophets came true, and deadly persecutions by an apostate Israel- left the building- to us. ****************************************************************************************************** Psalm 118:22 The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. ****************************************************************************************************** Isaiah 28:16 So this is what the Lord GOD says: "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation; the one who believes will never be shaken. ****************************************************************************************************** Mark 12:10 Have you never read this Scripture: 'The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. ****************************************************************************************************** Luke 20:17 But Jesus looked directly at them and said, "Then what is the meaning of that which is written: 'The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone'? ****************************************************************************************************** Acts 4:11 This Jesus is 'the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.' ****************************************************************************************************** Romans 9:33 as it is written: "See, I lay in Zion a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense; and the one who believes in Him will never be put to shame." **************************************************************************************************** The abandoned stone in my yard means all of this... and more; that most people miss the point of the Rejected Cornerstone... the point of those scriptures, the point which God was making through hundreds of amazing subtleties in the scriptures, the point of LIFE.

And perhaps it is a message... to me, to us; that no matter how discouraged, or old we may get, to keep on... to finish the race... to be on the lookout for new foundations upon which to build; To do whatever we can to prevent our best efforts from being lost causes or false starts... abandoned corner stones. Ruins. **************************************************************************************************** Jesus, who was the Messiah, was unfortunately the “stone of stumbling” and “rock of offense” for the First-Century Jews, who were the puffed-up builders of the rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, the end-all of religious practice. But their temple was only to last for a few more decades. God was unveiling a new covenant, starting with Jesus as the eternal cornerstone of the family of God, as he had been since the beginning of time. The rejection of His Kingdom, even His profound spiritual foundations, was merely a temporary delay which serendipitously facilitated the incorporation of all peoples into His Church. And as Jesus claimed that His Kingdom was not of this world, we who believe and follow Him are conversely only passing through this world as well, and are naturalized citizens of Heaven. We are not to worry too much about earthly things. Like politics or building worldly kingdoms. As the Bible says, it is all “hay and stubble.” It will all be blown away or destroyed one day.

It is not important what stones we turn, or hew here, or where we place them, but how we prepare ourselves and others for that ultimate destination, where none of our earthly striving will matter.

Linda and I are wrapping up a minimal refinement of the top of our section of the mesa, and have another acre or so to go, which constitutes a sharp limestone bluff, covered with mountain junipers. I hope to leave a large portion just the way it is; ancient and mysterious. It is littered with ancient juniper branches, bleached white like the bones left from some prehistoric battle. And there are piles of worked rock rubble; thousands of years of fractured chert left from generations of arrowhead production. And I have found a long, peculiar pile of large, unmolested rocks and small boulders, perhaps fifty feet long, where people in the past seemed to have been trying to make some kind of crude rampart, a defensive wall, as if they were expecting an attack. If stones were not being used to memorialize, they were usually being stacked as protection from enemies. We build monuments and castles and bridges... homes and public buildings... out of stone. Anything we plan to depend on. But you never hear much discussion about their cornerstones. Its a function lost to modern architecture. The significance of the alegory of the Rejected Cornerstone was lost with it. But here, in my yard, are ancient symbols of man's warlike nature, the weapons of self-defense, the memorials to the dead, and God's oft rejected alternative of Grace and Peace.

I never had a yard before with so much to tell. Last year I unearthed a three-inch chert knife, perhaps a spear point, chipped-up and driven into the bluff with considerable force... Was it a weapon thrown at an enemy? Dulled and broken, perhaps it was impaled between the layers of limestone during a battle. When I found it, I imagined a Plains warrior lunging after a Spanish soldier, his stone blade deflected by a superior steel sword, and his weapon thrust into the ground right before he died defending his home... The typical violence of clashing cultures. If these rocks could only speak...

Jesus once claimed to the Pharisees, (the “builders,” who wanted his followers to be censored), that if somehow his disciples could be silenced, the rocks would cry out instead. I believe that, and I just wish they would quietly tell me what was going on here!