Gushing Grace

“Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink.”  Exodus 17:6

You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip (though you can make some awful-tasting veggie juice), and you surely can’t knock water out of a rock. If you could crack open a stone that happens-t0-be-hollow, the few drops you might find inside would never be enough to fill the canteens of a million-plus people.  But that’s exactly what God did through Moses when the Israelites were thirsty.

^“The Lord answered Moses, ‘Go out in front of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink’”(Ex 17:5-6).

We would have searched for a stream, a spring, a palm-lined oasis—not a dry, hard rock.   A stone wall seemed to be the least likely place for provision, but it turned out to be the only one.   Whether the God of all creation tapped into an already-existing aquifer or whether He right-then formed the drops that fell matters not.  What we need to know is that God did what no one else could do and supplied what no one else could give—refreshment for thirsty, complaining pilgrims.  

The story is new to none of us.  I remember the Sunday School posters of a wild-haired Moses standing by the rock, trusty staff in hand, watching water flow from the crack toward the ground.  But what poured forth that day was much more than a trickle.   Life’s basic necessity came cascading down in a torrent of divine supply.  “He split the rocks in the desert and gave them water as abundant as the seas; He brought streams out of a rocky crag and made water flow down like rivers”(Ps 78:15-16).  Dry mouths were moistened and heavy hearts made hopeful by the gushing grace of a powerful God.

Refreshment is always available for thirsty, complaining pilgrims. The Source stays the same—“Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink’”(Jn 7:37), but sometimes God chooses the least likely spigots (or spickets, if you’re from the South) to stream His grace. Who would have looked for a giant-slayer in a sheep pen?  Who would have picked disciples at the fishing dock?  And no one would have chosen Bethlehem.  

Stay thirsty, my friends, and let God be your constant refreshment—even in the least likely of places.