Our 25-year-old step-nephew died recently rock climbing. It is horrible. Awful. The depth of brokenness cannot be put into words from this loss. I just want to be able to somehow put my arms around the broken hearts of his mom, dad, brother, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, who lived close and watched him grow up. To be able to bring some comfort to them and his friends. 

I wasn’t there when it happened. But of what I know, there’s a picture I can’t shake. It’s making me really think about what’s real and what’s not. What’s secure and what’s not.

The area he and his friends were climbing was familiar to them.  They were very experienced climbers. From what I understand, when they got to a spot in the climb, the rock on the face of the hill they needed to shimmy around, was the size of a Subaru and 3 feet tall. There was a ledge wide enough to plant his feet on as he shimmied that he felt adequately supported from underneath. It was said that he was in a sort of bear hug position clinging to the rock as he attempted to make his way around, with feet supported from underneath. He probably deducted he was quite secure. He’s quoted as saying on one occasion, “To be unsafe, is selfish.” What could go wrong? You’re holding onto a huge unmovable boulder. Your feet are secure from underneath….

But the boulder he was holding on to broke off.

He and it fell 30 feet.

He died from its weight.

As I think about what happened, this picture is hitting me. How many things do we do that feel secure? How often do we cling bear-huggingly around something or someone, for the source of our stability believing it’s secure? Believing that it’s ‘safe’. Believing it can’t move. How often do we believe the ledge is wide enough to bear our weight on, to keep us upright and keep us from falling? How often do we trust in our own perspective of the situation? And trust that what we think is safe, really is?

There is no way he could’ve know the boulder would break off.

We are ONLY HUMAN. 

There is much we do not know. 

This leaves me with the question…

WHAT IS TRULY SAFE?

What can we be secure in? 

There has to be more to trust in than our own perspectives and ways, since there’s so much we don’t know.

I’m reminded of Matthew’s eyewitness account of Jesus’ life and teachings in the Bible. There’s a specific time when Jesus is talking to a huge crowd of people, giving the longest, perhaps only ‘sermon’ so to speak.  He’s giving them instructions for living life in a new way.  A way that’s beyond our ‘only human’ perspective. He’s telling them about how to be safe and secure. He uses the picture of a house foundation to illustrate what is safe or not. He says that to hear His instructions and follow them is like building one’s house on solid rock. That storms WILL come, floodwaters WILL rise, and wind WILL beat on the house. But IT WILL NOT BE DESTROYED because it’s built on a rock foundation. 

He continues saying that anyone who hears His teaching and doesn’t follow them is foolish. That they are actually building their house on a sand foundation. When the rain and floods come, and the wind beats on the house, “IT WILL CRASH WITH A MIGHTY CRASH.” (Matthew 7:24-29)

This whole thing is leaving me with the sense…

That I cannot know what is truly safe and secure. I cannot trust in my human instincts, my perspective of what will truly hold me.

I need someone who knows. I need His instructions. There is no promise in Him that I will be protected from storms, floods, wind… in fact this life promises they will come. And I can get offended when my expectation of God’s protection is not met when they do come. BUT, He didn’t promise protection from them. He promised that,

 “There is no Rock like our God” (Isaiah 44:8)

He promised that if I build my life on His words, His instructions, do what He said to do, that I will be building on a sure and safe and secure place. 

It will hold me together when the storms come.

It will keep me from being destroyed. 

And when this temporary, short, life is done and gone and I stand before Him in the end…

I 

WILL 

BE 

SAFE.