In the Cleft of the Rock

A twisted and contorted piece of wood that has weathered to a mellow gray hangs on the wall of my porch. When I work at my sink and look out the window, I see it hanging there and it never fails to catch my attention.  I have had this piece of wood for over thirty years. We have moved twice since I first picked up this fragment and despite getting rid of loads of “stuff,” I hang on to this. Over the years, I have observed numerous people staring at it. They would twist their heads from side to side to try to make sense of it. Most of them just shrug their shoulders and say nothing. Some dared to try to say what it looks like. One friend readjusted it on the wall and declared it looked like a pterodactyl. A few have asked about it and I usually say, “Oh, it’s just an interesting branch I picked up one year when we were in Wyoming.”  I’m not fudging a bit when I say that, but it has far more significance to me.

In 1978, we spent the summer at the University of Denver where my husband took a short course in crystallography. When our six-year-old son learned we were going “out west,” he began campaigning to visit Old Faithful. Old Faithful is out west he reasoned, so there was absolutely no reason not to see it.  In that peculiar way that children have of wrapping parents around their fingers and tying them in a bow, Wes prevailed. The week after the short course ended, we found ourselves traveling across Wyoming on our way to Yellowstone National Park.

One morning we stopped at a sign indicating we had reached a spot on the Pony Express route. A rocky hill rose above the flat and arid land. It was probably the height of a three-story building, rocky and as barren as the rest of the landscape.

“Daddy, can we climb that mountain? Wes asked.

“Sure, do you girls want to go?” Larry asked Catherine and me.

Catherine decided to trudge up the hill, but I just wasn’t in the mood. In fact, I was not in a good mood.  I was fretting silently about a number of problems that waited for me back in Georgia.

I stood and surveyed the area with my eyes. It was the driest, most barren place I’d ever seen. The vegetation was scant and scrubby and a pale, washed-out green—the kind of green that plants turn when you forget to water them. I was amazed that even these pathetic plants could grow there. The scene fit my state of mind.

I looked down at my feet and saw an interesting piece of wood. I stooped to pick it up and inspect it, thinking that it might be interesting in a flower arrangement.  As I stood back up a spot of something, green—very green–caught my eye.  I stooped to check out what this could be. There, under a large boulder protruding from the “mountain” was a fern–lush, green, and healthy in the cleft of the rock.

What a message that fern proclaimed! Amid any problems or adversity that surrounds me, God will supply my needs. I am not dependent on circumstances.  I am not at the mercy of decisions made by others. I do not have to try to manipulate events and policies to my satisfaction.  I just have to seek His will and obey.  He had supplied the needs of that fern in that unfriendly environment. He would supply my needs.   Standing there holding that dry branch as if it were a scepter, I meditated on several Bible verses:

“Take no thought for the morrow. . .” Matthew 6:34

“Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: . . .” Psalm 23:5

“Casting all of your care on Him; for he careth for you.” I Peter 5:7

The words of a song that George Beverly Shay made famous, “He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock” kept circulating through my brain.

When my family came back down, the fretting was gone and I had handed my cares over to the One who is sufficient in all things.

To my husband’s chagrin, I took the piece of dead wood with me in our already overly packed car. It is still with me even after two moves. It is my constant reminder of the sustaining grace of Jesus Christ.