Is Your Foundation Made of Bedrock?
“All of creation will be shaken and removed, so that only unshakable things will remain. Since we are receiving a Kingdom that is unshakable, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe.” (Heb. 12:27-18 NIV)
When I left for college, I learned to expect an earthquake anytime. The New Madrid fault hadn’t shaken in well over a hundred years. It was due. “They” had all of us Midwesterners ready to build quake-proof shelters all over campus, except, being from Illinois, we had no idea what those were. Tornadoes we know. Earthquakes, not so much.
We never experienced an earthquake. Missourians haven’t since that time, either. St. Louis remains safe from teetering into the abyss in the foreseeable future.
Here’s something I’ve learned since then: most earthquake damage results from strong shaking. We remember the fires that break out because we see their destruction more clearly. Yet in most places, it’s the shaking on already shaky ground that causes the trouble.
I’ve also learned that bedrock areas hold pretty fast in earthquakes. Sandy ground, soft foundations, land reclaimed from the ocean or a lake—all these fall away in an intense shaking.
This is the message of Hebrews 12:
“You have not come to a physical mountain, to a place of flaming fire, darkness, gloom, and whirlwind, as the Israelites did at Mount Sinai. No, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless thousands of angels in a joyful gathering. When God spoke from Mount Sinai his voice shook the earth, but now he makes another promise: ‘Once again I will shake not only the earth but the heavens also.’ This means that all of creation will be shaken and removed, so that only unshakable things will remain. Since we are receiving a Kingdom that is unshakable, let us be thankful and please God by worshiping him with holy fear and awe.” (Heb. 12: 18-28 NIV)
God tells the writer, essentially, “I’m going to shake things up. In fact, I’m going to shake all of creation until it’s shaken back into order. I’ll shake until all the unintended, soft shifting mess is taken away and only the solid, perfect rock remains.”
Sometimes things need to be shaken into order. They’ve lost their functionality. Impurities have gotten in the cracks. What once seemed solid now groans beneath the weight of years of worries, change, and distance.
Do you feel that distance sometimes? Where we once felt God’s presence, now we feel our own uncertainties. Where our solid faith once stood, we’ve now got a teetering foundation, a result of the things we’ve trusted in rather than God, the rock we should be standing on. Or perhaps we never truly knew what we put our faith in, choosing a polyglot of options that shift with our circumstances.
Sometimes he will shake us, too.
God’s shaking in our lives signals his desire for us to be what we were meant to be, unencumbered by dust and dirt.
We don’t often perceive a good shaking up as a sign of joyful freedom and hope. We see it through a lens of fear, assuming the worst of anything that upsets our comfortable status quo.
But the Hebrews writer sets us straight on that. S/he explains that we have come to Mount Zion—not Mount Sinai. We’ve come to a joyful gathering. We’ve come as God’s own heirs. We “have come to Jesus, the one who mediates the new covenant between God and people.”
We have come to hope. To no more fear. To the one who is love and casts out fear. To joy, to the community of his people, to Jesus’ himself speaking for you. Holiness on the new mountain no longer a terrifying thing. It’s a new way, a better way, a healing, restoring activity.
The lesson we can learn from earthquakes is that shaking doesn’t harm structures that are built on bedrock. It destroys only structures that are built where they shouldn’t have been. The warning of Hebrews 12 and the warning of earthquakes are the same—be mindful of your foundation.
Shaking terrifies those who live on foundations they have built themselves with unsteady hands and insufficient knowledge. It doesn’t faze those who know that a master craftsman built their foundation and that it will hold.
Our foundation? “You have come to Jesus, the one who mediates the new covenant between God and people, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks of forgiveness.”
That’s it. That’s enough. That will hold. Our response, so difficult and against the human grain, is supposed to be, “so let us be thankful.”
Scripture for Reflection
“What was gain to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.” (Phil. 3:7 NIV)
“Everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain come down, the streams rose, and the wind blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.” (Matt. 7:24-25 NIV)
Reach for More
- On what have you places your foundation? A celebrity pastor? Right behavior? Right doctrine? Expectation of God’s blessing as an exchange for your faith? What kind of problems do you foresee if life hands you a shaking up and these things are what you believe in?
- Ask God what he might need to shake free in your life. Wait in prayer for his answer. Ask wise people you know the same question.
- Write down the answer to #2, and across from it, write what needs to be put in place of that in your life. Who do you need to trust in instead? Make a plan to shift from one to the other.
is a writer, speaker, pastor, mom of three, and author of five books. She likes to travel, grow flowers, read Tolkien, and research her next project. She believes in Jesus, grace, restoration, kindness, justice, and dark chocolate. Her passion is partnering with the next generation of faith. Jill blogs at jillmrichardson.com.
Photograph © Random Sky, used with permission
