A Touchy Rock

My husband Larry is a rock hound. He loves looking for rocks along the road side, the mountain trails, in the desert, anyplace he can. While living in Montana, he found several various colored and different shaped rocks and brought them to our house. The rocks decorated the flower beds and defined the fence line.

We had a large, perfectly flat, red sandstone rock that we used for a stepping stone to the deck. It came from the desert. People could stand on it, kick it, and jump on it. The rock didn’t move. It remained reliable and useful.

Larry also found other sandstone rocks in the desert that were soft. When one of those rocks was dropped, kicked or hit, it crumbled into many smaller pieces. They couldn’t be used for stepping stones, or along the edge of the fence line where the neighborhood kids could kick them as they walked by. I classified the soft sandstone rocks as “touchy,” meaning “don’t touch them.” They weren’t useful since we couldn’t depend upon them to maintain their shape.

I have known some “touchy” people, too. If you say the wrong thing, don’t acknowledge them, or disagree with them, they get angry or defensive. They are difficult to associate with.

Life has lots of kicks, bumps, and misunderstandings. We need to overlook most of these, be reliable, and not a “touchy” person who falls apart at the least little thing. It is helpful to take inventory of ourselves and see how useful we are to God and others.

I want to be reliable, not a touchy person.

“But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” Hebrews 3:13 (NIV)