Christ - The Solid Rock

A song has been going through my mind lately and slipping through my lips, “Solid Rock” It is an old hymn I learned when I was a small child. The first stanza goes like this – “My hope is built on nothing less, than Jesus’ blood and righteousness; I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.” The chorus goes, “On Christ, the Solid Rock, I stand; All other ground is sinking sand, All other ground is sinking sand.”

I posted something last week that I struggled over sharing. I struggled because it required of me to bare my heart about a situation that felt emotionally like sinking sand. I struggled to the point that I ended up removing the post all together. I tucked my feelings back into the privacy of my own life where they were safe and unexposed and posted something else. By doing that, I was left feeling a little guilty. After all, I started this blog so I could share my faith and journey with you, as we walk together along these pages.

Those words in the song, “all other ground” kept jumping out at me through the week, until they landed in this question, “what is all other ground?” So I asked God, and in answering, He brought to my mind that particular post; my reason for writing it, and my reason for removing it. He showed me that they belong to the “all other ground” in my life. The sinking sand of insecurities, feeling out of control, and my limited understanding of what He was doing in my life and someone else’s life through difficult situations, were all part of the “other ground.”

I was reminded once again what the “all” in this song really means. It has nothing to do with my preconceived notions of what sinking sand might be, or even what I view as “ground.” It is the anything and everything in my life that I stand my thinking and reasoning upon; a concept, a feeling, “all” things that are not Him. He is the only Solid Rock, everything else in life can be moved or shaken. When I am sinking in a problem, a sickness, a loss, He is the One who rises up in the situation. Like the song goes on to say, “His Oath, His covenant, His blood, Support me in the whelming flood; When all around my soul gives way, He then is all my hope and stay.” On Christ the Solid Rock I stand [because] all other ground is sinking sand!

I’m so glad William B. Bradbury decided to share his heart with us the day he wrote this song. It has traveled through many churches between the pages of hymnals. Its melody was planted in the soul of a child as its words sang their truth throughout a lifetime. The author warns us though, that we are not to even trust in the “sweetest frame,” but instead, to wholly lean on Jesus’ name.