Rocks (1)
Yesterday I was digging a hole in the "dirt" in my yard to make way for a compost pile.  I say "dirt" because it's really just a collection of rocks with sparse amounts of dirt mixed in.  Actually, I have a sneaking suspicion that the entire state of New Jersey is just one big rock, covered by a scant few inches of topsoil. 

So anyway, I was digging rocks out of the ground, when suddenly I hit a big one.  I spent the next hour or so unearthing the largest rock I've ever moved.  It was the heaviest object I've ever encountered in my life, made heavier by the fact that it was two or three feet down.  The thing is, it wasn't that big of an object, maybe two feet by one foot by one foot.  But it was deceptively heavy, and it was deceptively big.  It was quite a showdown, even for my favorite tool in the world, my slate rod

Fast forward to this morning, and what do I read in my morning Bible reading?  Psalm 62, which compares God to a rock.  The questions that go along with the reading asked me to "reflect on the specific characteristics of rocks and how they describe God's character."  Another God coincidence if I ever saw one.  My answer was easy to come up with:  Rocks are hard, and rocks are big.  You use rocks to build things on top of, like building faith on top of something that won't change or go away.  And rocks are often like the tip of an iceberg; i.e. there's more to God than what we see or know. 

Thinking about it further, I've noticed that many of the wonders of the natural world I've been fortunate enough to witness have something to do with rocks.  The iron-red mountains in Zion National Park are just big rocks.  The hoodoos of Bryce Canyon are rocks eroded by wind and water.  The Grand Canyon is sort of the absence of rock, though it's surrounded by giant walls of the stuff.  Islands are just rocks in the middle of water.  Volcanoes are rocks that used to be liquid.  Coral reefs are pretty much just rocks covered in stuff that attracts fish.  And all these rock things make me thank God for the beauty of nature. 

It's almost ridiculous how much God-stuff I can squeeze out of one simple series of events, but sometimes that's how it happens. 

One final thought about God and rocks:  Liquid Church did an excellent series called "Rock God" which was about discovering and experiencing God in music.  The first part was about music from the 60s through today and the second part focused solely on the 80s. #religion

Pig parts (3)
It thoroughly amazes me that the following meat products all come from the same animal: 
  • Bacon
  • Ham
  • Pork Chops
  • Ribs
  • Pulled Pork
  • Sausage
The differences between pulled pork and ham are so drastic, it makes one wonder whether we should thank God for creating such a culinarily diverse animal or human ingenuity for thinking up such distinct methods of curing and flavoring. #food