Rock Solid

All across Old City Jerusalem is this monochromatic, light, sandy-blond colored landscape comprised of this elegant, uniform limestone. I’ve never been anywhere in the world with so much rock—beautiful, light, limestone rock.

Soft on the eye, but tough, hard Cenomanian limestone. It’s everywhere. Every road. Every building. Every step. Every thing is this solid rock.

I stood beneath one enormous wall of Herod the Great’s grand second Temple structure. Massive. The Temple steps, walls, ritual baths and cisterns are all varying dimensions of this rock.

Another example: earlier today, I stood gawking at more rocks at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. These rocks were discovered and preserved by Constantine’s mama (Helena). The rocks? The authentic quarry that made up Golgotha, that is to say, Mount Calvary where Jesus was crucified. These are no ordinary rocks.

For me, the historical and theological contexts are fusing nicely. I don’t know about you, but I have no desire to build anything of mine on sludge and slop. I need rugged. I need tough. I need to jump up and down and know what’s beneath the weight of all I am - my junk, my dreams, my issues, my passions, my might—is solid and strong.

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, build on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the chief cornerstone. In Him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. - Ephesians 2:19-22.

This limestone, this very tangible, natural resource that is utterly ubiquitous in Jerusalem—the epicenter of our faith—holds a powerful, theological reality:

Rock. Solid. Foundation.

Not of limestone, baby, but of the legacy and lineage of the people of God.

And of God Himself.

Shalom from Israel,

~ Nancy