What’s Your Stone to Throw?

Sometimes it’s fascinating what your brain can come up with when you don’t have time to overthink. 

Last week I walked into Bible study late, right as the group was going around the circle answering the question of the night (part of our normal opening). Someone handed me a rock and a Sharpie (not part of our normal opening) and whispered to write down one word that encompasses my job/passions/hobbies etc. I had as much time to think as it took to listen to the answers the rest of the way around the circle. 

One word popped into my mind immediately: beauty. It seemed a little cheesy, but I couldn’t think of another, so I stumbled through an explanation and wrote it on my rock. 

I love beautiful things as much as anyone, but I never would have expected that to come up as one word to describe my life’s passion. And so in classic overthinking fashion, I had to figure out whether I really meant that, or just thought of a word at random. 

I still don’t know if that particular word is the best description for what I was trying to say, but I think I was on to something. 

It definitely holds true that what I love most about ranching all has to do with experiencing something beautiful. The times when I feel the most like this is what I truly want to do for the rest of my life are always the moments of beauty. Whether it's watching a calf stand up for the first time, or the way the sun shines on a freshly cut wheat field, or a pasture full of wildflowers or the view from the top of my favorite hill.

And I suppose that's also where it crosses over into my other passions of writing and creating content. When I make videos about ranch life, I’m really just trying to bottle up the beauty of it and share it with the world. 

And when I write, I don't just want to say things that are true. I want them to also be beautiful. I don't want my words to only be in people's minds, I want them to soak into their hearts. When I read certain authors it feels like the words are literally releasing tension from my shoulders and slowing my heart rate, and that's the kind of writing I want to do.

Of course, all this matters because there is also the beauty of God himself. I suppose when we come around to talking about the beauty of God the more accurate word is “glory.” More accurate, and more in alignment with the way this concept has been expressed throughout the ages. 

The desire to help people see and know the beauty of God and his creation is really just another way of saying the goal is to glorify him. To delight in him and to help others delight in him.

To go back to that night at Bible study, our video lesson that night talked about the Hebrew word yada, which means to know in the most intimate and relational sense. It’s the word used in Genesis 4 when it says Adam “knew” his wife and she bore a son, but it’s also the word David used when he told Goliath that he would defeat him “that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel.” 

The teacher went on to talk about how shepherds in Israel would spend hours every day slinging rocks - partly to pass the time, but also to practice so they could easily fend off wild beasts from their flock. This was what David had been doing his entire life; slinging stones. God had already been preparing him to face Goliath.

He explained that our stone is our one thing God has been preparing us to do as part of his story. And we can only do our one thing well if we focus on that, and don’t try to be all the parts of the story at once. We each get a chance to make God known in the one way he has equipped us for. 

I'm still not entirely sure if “beauty” is the one word for my stone, but it is a good reminder that the best way to glorify God is to be focused. To do one thing well even if it means neglecting other good things. 

The things everyone else at Bible study wrote on their rocks were good things, but they weren't my things. I've been struggling lately with letting go of all the things I can't do or at least can't do well and I needed this reminder to stay focused on the vision of what it is that God truly has given me to do. 

(Incidentally the same thing is true of good writing. You can't try to say everything you want to say in one post. That's why I've been struggling to write lately, for the same reason I've been struggling to focus in other areas. I have so many ideas swirling in my head and haven't been able to let go of the less important ones to write something focused. I’m not sure if that’s really relevant for the rest of this post, but it’s a little sidebar to explain why this post is the first in weeks.)

So what’s your stone to sling? How will you make God known to the world?