Dig Until You Reach Rock

The terrible mercy of discovering what our lives are actually built upon

“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?”

— Luke 6:46

There are words of Christ that console us.

There are others that strip us.

This is one of them.

“Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?”

There is almost something frightening in the simplicity of the question. Christ does not ask whether we believe the correct things about Him. He does not ask whether we admire His teaching, defend His Church, speak beautifully about prayer, or have spent many years in religious life.

He asks whether we do what He says.

The fathers understood the severity of this.

They knew how easily a man can construct an entire religious life around avoiding God.

We can speak about humility without allowing ourselves to be humbled.

We can speak about poverty while fiercely protecting what gives us identity.

We can speak about surrender while quietly arranging the conditions under which we will surrender.

We can speak about obedience while obeying only when obedience confirms the life we have already chosen.

We can speak about the Cross while spending enormous energy trying not to be crucified.

And through all of it we may continue saying:

Lord, Lord.

The desert was merciless toward this kind of illusion.

Not because the fathers were cruel.

Because they wanted God.

They had seen what religious self-deception could do to a soul. A man might know the Scriptures, fast severely, keep vigils, speak wisely, acquire disciples, and still remain almost entirely defended against God.

So they fled.

And when they reached the desert, they discovered something unsettling.

They had brought themselves with them.

This is why Christ’s image is so exact.

The wise man does not merely build.

He digs.

And he digs deep.

This is the part we often overlook.

Before there can be the house founded upon rock, there must be excavation.

Soil must be removed.

Layer after layer.

The accumulated earth of years.

Our ideas about ourselves.

Our accomplishments.

Our reputation.

Our usefulness.

Our imagined future.

Even our understanding of our vocation.

Dig.

Then deeper.

There are things we thought were rock that turn out to be only hardened earth.

There are identities that sustained us for decades and yet cannot bear the full weight of eternity.

There are structures that looked permanent because no flood had yet come.

Then the water rises.

And suddenly we discover what was foundation and what was merely familiar.

Illness can do this.

Failure can do this.

Aging can do this.

The loss of someone we love can do this.

The collapse of a vocation as we once understood it can do this.

Silence can do this.

Even prayer can do this.

The flood does not create the weakness in the foundation.

It reveals it.

This is one of the hardest mercies of God.

We ask Him to save the house.

Sometimes He allows the house to shake because He intends to save the man living inside it.

The fathers knew this mercy.

They did not ask first, “How can I preserve the life I have built?”

They asked:

What in me is not founded upon Christ?

That is a much more dangerous prayer.

Because God may answer it.

And when He does, things begin to fall.

Not necessarily because we have failed.

Sometimes things fall because they were never meant to bear the weight we placed upon them.

Our work cannot bear it.

Our reputation cannot bear it.

Our ecclesiastical standing cannot bear it.

Our intelligence cannot bear it.

Our spiritual accomplishments cannot bear it.

Even the image we have constructed of ourselves as faithful servants of God cannot bear it.

There is only one foundation.

Christ.

Not Christ as an idea.

Not Christ as the organizing principle of a religious identity.

Not Christ as the justification for our plans.

Christ Himself.

And eventually the spiritual life becomes terribly simple.

He says:

Forgive.

So forgive.

Give.

So give.

Pray.

So pray.

Do not judge.

So stop judging.

Take the lowest place.

Take it.

Lose your life.

Lose it.

Follow Me.

Follow.

There comes a point when commentary becomes another form of postponement.

The desert fathers knew this too.

A brother once asked Abba Pambo to teach him a psalm. Hearing the words, “I said, I will watch my ways, that I sin not with my tongue,” he left before learning the rest. Much later, when asked why he had not returned, he answered that he had not yet learned to live the first verse.

We would prefer to finish the Psalter.

The elder wanted to become the verse.

That is the difference between hearing and doing.

And perhaps this is why the Lord’s words are so severe.

He loves us too much to permit us forever to mistake hearing for obedience.

Eventually life itself becomes the test.

The flood comes.

The stream strikes the house.

And then theological vocabulary is of very little use.

What remains?

Perhaps very little.

A name whispered in darkness.

A prayer repeated when the mind can no longer gather itself.

A hand held beside a bed.

A forgiveness offered without being understood.

A duty performed when no one sees.

A future surrendered.

A reputation allowed to die.

The refusal to flee the place where love has placed us.

These things may appear small.

But perhaps we have misunderstood greatness.

The foundation is beneath the earth.

No one sees it.

That is precisely why it can hold everything.

The deepest work of God in a human being often becomes increasingly invisible.

Less explanation.

Less self-justification.

Less need to be recognized.

Less certainty about what comes next.

And beneath it all, something begins to appear that cannot be taken away.

Christ.

The flood may still come.

Indeed, it will.

The Gospel never promises the house will be spared the storm. Both houses are struck.

The difference is not that one life suffers and another does not.

The difference is what remains when suffering has finished revealing the truth.

Perhaps this is why the old men went into the desert.

They wanted to discover the foundation before death did the digging for them.

And perhaps this is also the strange grace hidden within those seasons when God permits much of what once supported us to disappear.

The digging has begun.

Do not hurry to fill the hole.

Do not rebuild too quickly.

Do not reach immediately for another identity, another explanation, another usefulness, another structure that will tell you who you are.

Dig.

Let the false foundations be exposed.

Let even the good things become poor enough that they no longer stand between you and God.

Until at last the shovel strikes something that does not move.

Not your vocation.

Not your accomplishments.

Not what others think of you.

Not even what you think of yourself.

Christ.

And perhaps then there will be no need to say very much.

“Lord, Lord.”

The Name will no longer be something merely spoken.

It will have become the ground beneath your feet.

And when the waters rise, you will discover that the Rock has been holding you all along.