One night, a man was sleeping in his cabin when suddenly his room was filled with the light and the Creator appeared.

The Creator told the man he had work for him to do, and showed him a large rock in front of his cabin. The Creator explained that the man was to push against the rock with all his might.

The man did the same, day after day. For many years he toiled from sun up to sun down, his shoulders set squarely against the cold, massive surface of the unmoving rock, pushing with all his might. Each night the man returned to his cabin sore, and worn out, feeling that his whole day had been spent in vain…

Since the man was showing signs of discouragement, the Adversary decided to enter the picture by placing thoughts into the man’s weary mind:

“You have been pushing against that rock for a long time, and it hasn’t budged. Why kill yourself over this? You can never move it,” thus, giving the man the impression that the task was impossible and that he was a failure. These thoughts discouraged and disheartened the man. “Why kill myself over this?” he thought. “I’ll just put in my time, giving just the minimum effort; and that will be good enough.” And that is what he planned to do, until one day he decided to make it a matter of prayer and take his troubled thoughts to the Creator. “Creator,” he said, “I have labored long and hard in your service, putting all my strength to do that which you have asked. Yet, after all this time, I have not even budged that rock by half a millimeter. What is wrong? Why am I failing?”

The Creator responded compassionately, “My friend, when I asked you to serve me and you accepted, I told you that your task was to push against the rock with all your strength, which you have done. Never once did I mention to you that I expected you to move it. Your task was to push.” “Now you come to me with your strength spent, thinking that you have failed. But is that really so?

Look at yourself. Your arms are strong and muscled, your back is sinewy and brown, your hands are callused from constant pressure, and your legs have become massive and hard. Through opposition you have grown much, and your abilities now surpass that which you used to have. Yet you haven’t moved the rock. But your calling was to be obedient and to push and to exercise your faith in My wisdom. This you have done. I, my friend, will now move the rock.” At times, when we hear a word from the Creator, we tend to use our own intellect to decipher what He wants, when actually what the Creator wants is just obedience and faith in Him…. By all means, exercise the faith that moves mountains, but know that it is still the Creator who moves the mountains.

“Push”
Story found at
Morning Story and Dilbert

The end of the story reminds everyone to “push” or to “pray-until-something-happens” as an act of faith, but frankly, that seemed a little too “cute” the way it was expressed, so I truncated the original text into the quote above.

That said, I know exactly how it feels like to push and push against an immovable object and see absolutely no result. I have often felt as if making a difference is impossible and that my life is a failure.

Just watching the latest situation in Israel and how the world press and most of the nations on our planet are castigating Israel for defending itself against bloodthirsty terrorists…um, excuse me, “courageous freedom fighters battling their oppressors,” is enormously frustrating. And yet there’s not one single thing I can do about it. Every time I speak out, usually in some social networking venue, in support of Israel, only a few like-minded “religious nuts” are supportive. The rest of the world is either strangely silent or venomously outspoken against Israel and against anyone who would support her and the Jewish people.

It’s the same in so many other areas of my life. As a self-avowed Christian, I’m used to taking plenty of “heat” from atheists who believe all manner of terrible things about me because of my faith. However, I also recently witnessed an online conversation taking Christians to task for our history of supersessionism against Jews. Granted, this is a valid observation, but to the speaker, it didn’t seem to make a difference who the Christian was or if they had renounced supersessionism. Further, the Jewish person in question is “Messianic” or a believer in Jesus (Yeshua) as the Messiah. While most Messianic Jews I know are friendly toward “Judaically-aware” Christians or “Post-supersessionistic” Christians, apparently there are some who aren’t particularly tolerant of anyone who is a non-Jewish believer.

There’s not a darn thing I can do about that, either.

I skipped going to church last Sunday for a number of reasons not the least of which was my concern over how I would be received again at Sunday school class given my being particularly outspoken (and embarrassing myself in the process) the previous week. It’s now Thursday and Sunday morning is just a few days away. In trying to project myself into the weeks and months ahead, unless something dramatic happens one way or the other, I don’t know that there’s anything I can do to “install” myself as an accepted participant in church, either.

The rock is the rock, after all. It’s big and it’s heavy, and in all the time I’ve been pushing against it…years and years and years, it hasn’t budged an inch.

But according to the anonymous storyteller, it doesn’t have to. My job is to push, or rather, to pray, without necessarily expecting or receiving a response or a result. The “push” acronym says “pray until something happens.” But what if nothing happens?

OK, clearly something recently happened but I wasn’t particularly praying about it or even thinking in that direction. It was just one of those “out of a clear blue sky” events. On the other hand, I’ve also recently said that there are miracles that only happen when we cooperate with God and actively participate in the miracle. That means do something. It also means that one day, I may push against the rock and feel it miraculously move!

Frankly, that kind of scares me. I live in a world of expectations. I expect the Sun to rise in the east and set in the west. I expect to go to sleep at night and wake up in the morning. I expect a particular routine for my days. Pushing the rock and not having it move, frustrating as it may be, is also expected. If it moves, suddenly, I’m out of control and off-balance; likely to fall on my face (not like that hasn’t happened before). I don’t know what to pray for more, that the rock moves or that it doesn’t move.

Strange, I know, but remember, I don’t like change…even when it’s beneficial and necessary.

But God makes changes according to His will and not my will and my only job is to push against the rock. If it doesn’t move, I push at the start of the day and stop at the end. The rock is just the rock and it doesn’t move. If I push and it does move, then it moves, I lose my balance and fall on my face. Embarrassing to be sure, but assuming it doesn’t hurt too much, the worse that happens is that my face gets dirty and I have to get up again and figure out what happened. What did God change and why? What do I have to do with it and what should I do now? Once I figure out what I’m supposed to do, will I have the courage to do it?

Strange, I know, but remember, I don’t like change.

Even when I ask for it.

He is my God, my living redeemer.
Rock of my affliction in time of trouble…

-from Adon Olam

So the rock has moved. I need to move too.