One evening years ago a man was walking up through a deep gorge when a storm broke. The rain came down in torrents. He knew that he would never make it through the top end of the gorge and onto high ground. But he ran anyway. It was pitch dark.
The water began rising. The man was forced to climb up the rocky side of the gorge. His hands groped for something to hold. He slipped back several times. All of a sudden his hand felt a vertical opening in a huge rock. The opening became wider. There was room for his upper body, then for his entire body. He wedged himself into the split rock, and there found shelter from the fierce storm, high enough above the raging water to be completely safe. There he waited out the storm.
The man was a Christian clergyman. Now resting in the security of the split rock, words began to come to him—words which, when he arrived home, he would put on paper for all the world to sing. The man's name was Augustus Toplady, the year was 1776. And the famous words were those of the hymn Rock Of Ages, Cleft For Me.
They say, "You can run but you can't hide." It's not true. Not spiritually true, anyway. As the hymn says, we have a safe refuge in Jesus. We need no other. His side was split so that we might hide in the wounds made there on the cross, where He suffered for our sins.
Every time we come to church we come to hide in the Gospel of Jesus our Savior. Every time we have our home or personal devotions, we run and hide in Christ. Every time we preach or teach or tell the Good News, we are telling people there is a place to hide. Every time we pray, basing our prayer on a Gospel verse, we hide in the only safe place there is.
Thanks be to our saving God.
— From the Lutheran Spokesman |
