Meditations/Sermons that didn't get away

He alone is my rock

Psalm 62:7
He alone is my rock and my salvation, *
my stronghold, so that I shall not be shaken.

When I was fifteen, my family moved from Ohio to Georgia. I left behind my family, my friends, my school, my church—all the people who knew me and thought well of me. I was still the same person; but it wasn’t reflected in the responses I got from others, and I felt closed out and alone. Blaming this lack of welcome reception on the South, I graduated early and went back North to college. This, now sixteen-year-old, frog from a comfortable puddle who had been miserable in the small pond, was now flailing in Lake Michigan, trying to keep her head above water so as not to drown. I could no longer think of myself as clever or smart. I didn’t know who I was, and I was lost.

There was a seminary of my denomination in the college town, and the chapel happened to be right across the street from my first period class. I fell into the habit of attending morning prayer and communion nearly every morning. That connection to God was the only thing in my life that felt stable and reliable.

Whenever I’ve gone through those transition periods, when the person we are becoming is still unknown to us, I’ve clung to this image of God as my rock. I may come out changed, but neither shaken nor drowned.