A Firm Foundation or a Stone of Stumbling

“And he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offense to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” (Isaiah 8:14). Christ is the Rock of our Salvation. He is firm, solid, reliable, undeniable, unavoidable, inescapable. He is in all things, through all things, above all things, below all things. All things testify of Christ. He draws us back to Him and His grace in each moment of our lives. We, therefore, have a choice. We can look to Christ with an eye single to His glory, and find in His love and mercy a sanctuary and a refuge and a covert from the storms and misfortunes of life. Or, we can choose to shut our eyes  and pretend that He does not exist. This will be painful both for us and for He Who loves us because Christ is this rock that is always before us and if we close our eyes and pretend not to see Him, we are going to stumble over and over again. Christ wants us to build our lives on the safe foundations of His rock, not always try to blindly run away from Him only to beat ourselves against Him instead. We cannot escape Christ but we can bruise ourselves against Him. We can get offended that this great big rock is always in our way, especially with all of the other misery in our life, or we can stop rejecting the stone of our salvation and stop trying to run away from someone that we will never be able to escape.