The Rock of stability

A New York Times piece, “No way to grow up” (David Leonhardt, January 4, 2022), serves as one of many wake-up calls to reverse the impact of the pandemic on our schools and children, which has included learning loss, increasing gun violence, mental health challenges, and isolation. The article quotes the president of the National Parents Union as saying, “The No. 1 thing that parents and families are crying out for is stability.” Stability is indeed yearned for in so many avenues of life these days across the globe—a strength and permanence that can be found even in the midst of great change or turmoil. 

Stability is a common theme of many writers in the Bible, who wrote in tumultuous times about the stability, calm confidence, and progress gained from understanding God as the supreme power, far superior to the conflicting so-called powers of the day. In Psalms we read: “Truly my soul silently waits for God; from Him comes my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation; He is my defense; I shall not be greatly moved” (62:1, 2, New King James Version). Building on the Rock referred to in the Bible writers’ teachings, we stand secure with God as our ceaseless source of undisturbed peace, steadiness, and power.  

When things we have held dear are unsettled, changing, being questioned or debated, or even lost, we find that the same saving Rock the Psalmist found—the eternal, spiritual foundation of divine Love, God—is still present. 

“God is love,’’ wrote the disciple John, “and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him” (I John 4:16). Love is the creator of all—the permanent substance of our individual and collective being. Universal Love—all-encompassing, all-powerful God—is our common origin and life-breath. 

Each of us is God’s spiritual offspring and related to one another in harmony through our one creator. The first line of the Lord’s Prayer—“Our Father which art in heaven”—and its spiritual interpretation in Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures—“Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious” (p. 16)—describe the changeless foundation of our relation to God as Love and our relation to one another as brothers and sisters. How empowering it is to realize that the true being of each of us exists in a state of permanent, God-derived stability, no matter how turbulent things appear. 

Eddy gave loving counsel to members of one of the branches of The Church of Christ, Scientist, and her guidance is particularly relevant today. She encouraged them to have meekness, mercy, and love in their hearts. Abiding in these Christly qualities would enable them to be planted on the Rock no matter what: “Thus founded upon the rock of Christ, when storm and tempest beat against this sure foundation, you, safely sheltered in the strong tower of hope, faith, and Love, are God’s nestlings; and He will hide you in His feathers till the storm has passed. Into His haven of Soul there enters no element of earth to cast out angels, to silence the right intuition which guides you safely home” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 152).

Mary Baker Eddy had lived the truth of this statement in her own life. In the second half of the 1800s, during a time of great change and instability, she discovered and established Christian Science, based on the teachings of Christ Jesus and the entire Bible. Major reforms were transforming health care, education, science, voting rights, and human rights. The Civil War had wracked the United States. People were still grappling with the Emancipation Proclamation, and later faced the Spanish-American War. Despite this volatile climate of thought, Eddy’s revolutionary discovery brought out the powerful effect of understanding that divine Love is the omnipotent and spiritual cause that restores harmony and health to the individual, and brings stability and progress for all humanity.  

Transitional stages lived through in any age are often not easy. But we can turn to the precedent and the promise of God’s stability—build on the demonstrations of those in the Bible and of many before us, which show how the promise of God’s constant love for all is continually fulfilled. That same ageless stability, through unchangeable, divine Love, empowers us to go forward courageously, trusting in God’s care, our spiritual intuition, and our love for one another to “guide us safely home.” God’s healing influence is always present in human consciousness, and we can trust this, know this, and yield to this divine influence. In so doing, we stay planted on the Rock, alert and responsive to God-inspired steps, which lead us forward constructively.

In short, it’s about divine Love. Taking time for our own communion with divine Love gives us rest and fresh encouragement. It wakes us to the ever-presence of God’s love that guards and guides us. It inspires us to love one another. Love is the source of the comfort, stability, and renewal revealed in the wisdom and spiritual inspiration of the Bible, and it can be lived and seen in our lives today. Divine Love—inclusive, fundamental, and comforting—is our Rock, in families, schools, other aspects of our lives, and throughout society, and it is here to stay.

Kim Crooks Korinek 
Guest Editorial Writer 

New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.