Bubbling Boulders
And the Lord spake
unto Moses, saying,
Take the rod, and
gather thou the assembly together,
thou, and Aaron thy
brother, and speak ye unto the rock before their eyes;
and it shall give
forth his water,
and thou shalt bring
forth to them water out of the rock:
so thou shalt give the
congregation and their beasts drink.
— Numbers 20:7,8
When they announced that the annual
Garden Walk was going to be held in lo, our very neighborhood, with the patron
party in yea, our very back yard, I went into a panic of Biblical proportions.
To transform our yard into the Garden
of Eden meant spending a Noah's flood worth of my husband's money, already
drained dry by the plagues and locusts of college tuition checks.
But the yard never looked better
than at last night's patron party. When it was over, we shouted "Halle-LOO-jah!
AY-men!!!" and hobbled off to bed for a 12-hour sleep, complete with drool.
Best of all, who knew? The
centerpiece of our landscape fix-up is a scene right out of the Old Testament:
fountains of water miraculously bubbling up out of dry rocks.
Bubbling boulders! And here's all
there is to it: get a mondo drill bit and and "core" the rock like an apple. Fit
a pipe inside. Dig a hole. Put in a big pan. Fill with river rock and a pump.
Place boulder. Hook up electrical power from the house. Put the garden hose
into the hole; fill. Repeat four times. Flip a switch, and presto!
A very pretty "water feature," one
I'll never take for . . . granite.
Yes, we're having fun. We claim we
put the rocks in place, and eureka! Water just started spurting out. Next,
we're going to try it with an oil rig; with the price of gas. . . .
We also claim we will replace the
water with champagne when our four daughters get married; self-service saves a
bundle at receptions.
We ALSO claim we've going to set up
a tent in our front yard. My beloved will wear a dark suit and point at the
rocks with a rod of iron (he's in the steel business, so he'll use rebar) and
shout:
"ROCKS, GIVE FORTH THY WATER!!!"
I'll be hiding in the dining room,
flipping the switch. The boulders will bubble. The rubes will kneel before him
and thrust $5 bills at him to lay hands on their putters and bless them with
his mighty power.
Or maybe not. Definitely maybe not.
Because bubbling boulders are
actually a very beautiful, important Biblical symbol. I love having such a
powerful testimony to the work of Jesus Christ right in our front yard:
n
Christ
is the Rock of Ages (1 Corinthians 10:4).
n
He is
the fountain of everything (Zechariah 13:1).
n
From
Him flow rivers of living water (Jeremiah 2:13).
n
Christ
was prefigured in the Old Testament, including in this story from the Exodus: When
the Israelites were desperately thirsty in the desert, God told Moses to smite
a rock, and out would come water (Exodus 17:6). God was standing there as Moses
did it in front of the people and the elders; there was no doubt the water came
from God.
n
This prefigured
how God would "smite" the Rock, Jesus Christ, through the crucifixion, to
provide salvation for a parched and perishing world. When the soldier pierced
His side on the Cross, out came water as well as blood (John 19:34-37).
n
Later,
when the Israelites were thirsty again, God told Moses to speak to a rock for
water. But Moses hit it with his rod, twice -- showing off instead of giving
God the credit (Numbers 20:11,12). Consequently, God denied Moses entrée into
the Promised Land.
Whoa! That sucks for him!
So we've agreed: if we hit the
switch, and the boulders don't bubble, we won't try again. We'll just call the
pond guy who worked this "miracle" for us, and fast and pray. (The fasting
won't be hard; we spent our grocery money on the landscape re-do.)
Trust the rest to the Rock of Ages. It's an honor to go with
His awesome flow. †
