Have you ever carried large rocks up a mountain?
Several years ago, I was traveling to Greensboro to visit my parents. On the drive up, I phoned them just to check in. My Mom warned me that my Dad had a task for me when I arrived. He wanted me to help him move a large stone that was stationed in the corner of their front yard—it was positioned there like some misplaced monument. Obviously, the previous owners thought the rock added beauty to the yard. My Dad wanted it moved.
I ended that conversation with my Mom and immediately called my brother. “Do you know anything about this rock Dad wants moved?” My brother replied, “Yep. Have fun with that!”
When I arrived and settled in, Dad asked me join him in the front yard. We gathered around the now famous rock. It was oblong with dimensions of about 2 feet by 2 feet by 3 feet. I’m not sure something that solid and that large can be called a “rock.” Most likely the appropriate description is “boulder.” Two ordinary sized men were going to try and move a boulder.
I desperately wanted to help my Dad.
I desperately did not want to disappoint him.
I desperately wanted to be a good son.
But mostly, I wanted to call my brother and gloat that I had, in fact, been able to be the better son and help Dad get the gigantic boulder moved.
Dad and I could not budge the boulder. We hemmed and hawed; we negotiated; we conspired; we tired several plans of attack to no avail. Two broken shovels and half an hour later. We admitted defeat.
In Exodus 34:1-35-9, I read of a similar situation.
The LORD told Moses,
“Prepare two stone tables like the first ones. I will write on them the same words that were on the tablets you smashed. Be ready in the morning to come up Mount Sinai and present yourself to me there on the top of the mountain. No one else may come with you. In fact, no one is allowed anywhere on the mountain. Do not even let the flocks or herds graze near the mountain.” So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first ones. Early in the morning, he climbed Mount Sinai as the LORD had told him, carrying the two stone tables in his hands.
Tradition and scholars surmise that the tablets of stone were thick square blocks of stone; they were six hand-breadths tall, six hand-breadths wide, and three hand-breadths deep. In modern measurements, that is about 18″ × 18″ × 9″. EACH!!
Here is some context: this will be Moses’s SECOND trip up the mountain with stone tablets. Remember, he came down the mountain the first time with the tablets inscribed with words written by God’s own hand only to discover the people worshiping a graven image created by his trustworthy co-minister, Aaron.
In haste, and probably anger, Moses smashes the tablets to the ground. They break into pieces at his feet.
And now, here we are in Exodus 34, and God is telling Moses, you’ve got to do it again.
I’ve been there in life. I’ve struggled to do the thing that I thought God wanted me to do. I exerted the effort and energy to complete the task to the best of my ability only to find the thing crumbling before me. It is frustrating. (frustrating beyond measure)
I’m not sure what I would have said if I had been Moses. Scripture doesn’t tell us what he said about the repeat task. But, I can only imagine, he stood there and said (or at least thought to himself), “You’ve got to be kidding me, God! I have done this once before and your people, the grumbling ingrates, were so unappreciative—what makes you think this time will be different?” God replies, “Moses, let me repeat it for you, Prepare two stone tables like the first ones. I will write on them the same words that were on the tablets you smashed. Be ready in the morning to come up Mount Sinai and present yourself to me there on the top of the mountain. No one else may come with you.”
You’ve got to be kidding me. Right? We are seriously trekking back up this mountain side carrying these two tablets of stone. Carrying them, not pulling them up on a cart or on the back; and not leaving them to the care of a well-muscled Sherpa. Also, remember, Moses did not have a great pair of NIKES or the latest pair of Boreal Ice Mutant Mountaineering Boots.
There is another phrase in this text that stands out to me. “No one else may come with you.” In other words, this task is yours alone. The arduous task of carrying these two stone tables up the side of the mountain (and bringing them back down again) is yours and yours alone.
Have you ever carried two boulders up the side of a mountain AND carried them back down the mountain?
Sometimes, in life, there are tasks before us that only we can do. We can’t go around it. We can’t go under it. And we can’t go over it. We have to go through it. And sadly, or unfortunately, “no one else may come with us.”
But here is the beauty part. (You knew that was coming didn’t you? There is always the fiber of the good news of the gospel weaving its way through scripture.)
God met Moses on the mountain!
Scripture reports, Then the LORD came down in a pillar of cloud and called out his own name, “YHWH” as Moses stood there in God’s presence. God passed in front of Moses and said, “I am the LORD. I am the LORD, the merciful and gracious God. I am slow to anger and rich in unfailing love and faithfulness.”
My friends, it is in the midst of those seemingly arduous and challenging moments of our lives; smack dab in the middle of those times where we struggle to carry the burden up the side of a mountain that the Most High God, the Divine Creator, reveals God’s self to us in ways and manners which are not and cannot be experienced on standing on level ground with nothing in our hands. There are places in our journey that only we can travel; pathways on which no one else may go with us, and it is there that God shows up.
I don’t know what you’re facing today. I don’t know what mountain lay before you. I don’t know what rocks you’re struggling to carry. I don’t know what arduous seemingly futile task God is laying on your heart to do. But rest assured, God will not fail you. Where God guides, God provides.
Let’s carry some boulders up the mountain and see what God has in store for us.
By the way, the boulder my Dad wanted moved from his front yard those many years ago, is still positioned in the exact same spot in the corner of his front yard. He plants flowers around it.