Rock Hunting

He picked up five smooth stones from a stream and put them into his shepherd’s bag. Then, armed only with his shepherd’s staff and sling, he started across the valley to fight the Philistine.

Most of us know the story of Goliath and how he killed his giant with a stone but I always wondered how he chose his stones.  Did he have a special place where he went to get his stones?  Did they have to be a certain size or shape?  How many did he pick up and put back down?  How should we pick our rocks to slay our current enemies?

What would our rocks be in these modern times?  It’s not like we can just go around throwing rocks at our enemies in broad daylight and getting away with it.

I think that perhaps we need some grace.  One of our rocks should be grace.  In order to properly deal with our giants, we need to have grace.  We need to be able to decide if perhaps the giant is the way it is because of past hurts or its upbringing.  Maybe we don’t really need to slay it after all, it just needs a good dose of grace.

Love should be another rock we look for.  Jesus left us with the commandment to love one another.  Perhaps if we could just learn to love our enemies here again there would be no need for any death to occur.  What about truth?  That would be a pretty good rock to have in our possession.  What if the whole issue is that neither of you know the real truth of the matter?

Compassion would also be a nice rock to have in the collection, much like grace it is very powerful.  If we could learn to come alongside our giant and maybe change some mindsets with some pure understanding the disagreement could just be dissolved.  Peace I believe would be one of the best ones to own.  Much like the river it was probably taken from, peace can begin to flow.  When we are at peace because we have sought God in the matter, things are put into better perspective.