When you Find Yourself Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

My husband and I went to discover what it is like to live between a rock and a hard place. We wanted to take notes. And photographs.

While most of us talk about circumstances that press us down, it's not often you get to see a real life example of rock and hard place living.

So we went.

We parked our bikes under the tall cottonwood and velvet ash trees before walking up the steep paved trail to Weeping Rock at Zion National Park.

High above us, drops of water fell from the Navajo Sandstone, soaking the ground and leaving shallow puddles. Weeping Rock formed when the water that fell on the above plateaus hit the impermeable shale--the Kayenta Layer. Unable to soak into the ground, the water found a way out through the permeable Navajo Sandstone. The process of peculating sideways through the rock was not a quick one, however.

"Ancient water," the ranger had said in a talk the night before.  Experts estimated the water took over 1200 years from its first falling to seep through the layers of stone and make its way to Weeping Rock where it fell around us now, drop by drop.

1200 years.

Around 800 A.D.

A time in history when Charlemagne had been crowned the Emperor of the West by Pope Leo III. Arabic scholars had invented Algebra. The Vikings had begun ransacking the British Isles.

1200 years since this water at Zion National Park last fell from the sky.

1200 years of existing between the Kayenta Layer and Navajo Sandstone, literally, a rock and a hard place.

Water fell on my shoulders. Water upset the calm reflections in the puddles at our feet. Water brought the necessary moisture for surrounding plants: canyon grape, scouring rush, box elder and scrub oak.

What happens at the escape of a rock and a hard place?

What happens. Let me tell you.

Everything gets wet.

There is no containment. No neat and orderly.

Signs were erected announcing caution and danger of slippery surfaces. Stairs at the end of the trail were mud covered. Plants grew right out of drenched cliffs. People skirted around cascading streams of water.

One drop fell on my outstretched fingers. The smaller fragments seeped into the wrinkles and lines in my palm. I caught another drop and held the ancient water--water that had been hidden in darkness for 1200 years, water that found a way out when caught between a rock and a hard place.

Which brought me to a thought, a thought that peculated through me since we visited Weeping Rock last week.

Jesus once told a woman at a well that if people would drink of the truth in his words, they would never be thirsty again. "Indeed," he said in John 4:14, "the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.

"A spring of living water.

What would happen if the life-giving water of God's words came in contact with our own rock and hard places? Of the rock and hard places of those we love?

Would change happen?

If so, could we expect it to be a messy experience? Should we erect caution signs and warn people about slippery conditions ahead? Or should we simply skirt around the mud puddles?

Annie Dilliard is often quoted for this wisdom about faith:

"Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies' straw hats...to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping God may wake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us out to where we can never return."

God may draw us out to where we can never return.

Water finds a way out when it comes in contact with an impermeable layer.

Cannot the same be said of God's love in hard situations? Of faith when confronted with the difficult? Of the hope we hold onto?

It's time to issue some crash helmets and hand out the life preservers! God is on the move, even in our hardest places.The ancient water at Zion took 1200 years between a rock and a hard place before finding the light of day. Jesus spoke life-giving words over 2000 years ago--ancient words that are still traversing through hearts.

Do you find yourself caught between a rock and a hard place?

Be careful. You might get wet.