Roll Your Rock

By Gerhard Venter

The mythological character Sysiphus was condemned to roll a heavy rock up a steep hill. Every time he got to the top of the hill, his strength would give out and the rock would roll right back down to the bottom of the hill. Doesn't life feel like this sometimes? That rock is often not taken away from us, because we live in a world that is full of sin and evil. But Christians know that God can lend you His strength when yours is gone. In this book I have collected 100 devotions that — and this is my prayer — could make that heavy burden a little bit lighter.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gerhard Venter
• Release date: May 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393554486

Gerhard Venter

Gerhard Venter was born in Pretoria, South Africa, and came to the United States with his family in 1996. His long career in IT ended in 2010 due to chronic back pain, but he had already seen the writing on the wall and enrolled in seminary at Emory University. He graduated with a masters in theological studies (MTS) in 2011, and is currently enrolled in a D.Ed in pastoral counseling at Argosy University. Gerhard has just completed a book titled Through Pain to Victory and is planning a dissertation on The text of the Psalms and religious coping with chronic pain.

Book preview

Roll Your Rock

100 Christian Meditations for When the Rock Is Too Heavy and the Hill Is Too Steep

Gerhard Venter

Copyright © 2019 by Gerhard Venter

All rights reserved. This work is self-published by its author. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Gerhard Venter

580 Baldwin Falls Rd

Baldwin, GA 30511

Email: [e-mail]

I invite you to visit my website at http://gerhardsbooks.com

All Biblical quotations from:

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Note that all quotations from the New International Version in this book will be attributed with the abbreviation (NIV).

All other quotations are attributed to their sources in the notes (footnotes or endnotes)

Authored by Gerhard Venter

Thank you for picking up my book!

I have a present for you — a free ebook. 10 Pebbles for Your Sling is a collection of ten Christian devotions for times of trouble. Just like David slew his giant, Goliath, with a pebble hurled from his sling, these devotions can be the pebbles in your prayer sling.

Get your free ebook at the link below:

http://www.gerhardsbooks.com/

Topic One

Hard Rocks and Soft Rocks

This book takes its theme from the mythological character Sysiphus, who was condemned to roll a heavy rock up a steep hill. Every time he got to the top of the hill, his strength would give out and the rock would roll right back down to the bottom of the hill.

Doesn’t life feel like this sometimes? That rock is often not taken away from us, because we live in a world that is full of sin and evil, but Christians know that God can lend you His strength when yours is gone.

In this section I offer meditations to show you God’s love and help with both hard rocks and soft rocks. Soft rocks are those hurts that are inside your heart and soul, that cannot be seen from the outside. Hard rocks are physical pain, injury and disease. Hard rocks and soft rocks often go together.

Just a note: some soft rocks can be harder than hard rocks.

Recalculating your route

Insofar as the words suffering and pain, can, up to a certain degree, be used as synonyms, physical suffering is present when the body is hurting in some way, whereas moral suffering is pain of the soul. In fact, it is a question of pain of a spiritual nature, and not only of the psychological dimension of pain which accompanies both moral and physical suffering.

The vastness and the many forms of moral suffering are certainly no less in number than the forms of physical suffering. But at the same time, moral suffering seems as it were less identified and less reachable by therapy.

— Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris¹.

Doctors and psychologists use an interesting word to indicate that one disease or condition is often also present when another occurs: They call it co-morbid. Depression (which is one form of the moral suffering that is outlined in this letter) is often co-morbid with chronic pain. And that is to be expected. One is tempted to say that, if you’re not depressed when your life is ruined by unending pain, you’re not understanding the situation.

But there’s another way to deal with chronic pain. Have you noticed how your GPS device reacts when you deviate from the route she has worked out? (GPS devices are female, in my mind, because mine speaks with a female voice and is called Dolores). When you take the wrong turnoff, she kind of sulks for a moment and then announces: Recalculating.

When a chronic condition forces you off the highway, it’s no use to stop the car and slump over the steering wheel, weeping and cursing your luck. Then it’s time to gather your strength and recalculate your route. In fact, you may even change your destination.

I’ve had to do this. My first recalculation was to start presenting chronic pain seminars, at which I would also be promoting my current book, Through Pain to Victory. It took me a year to realize that I would not be able, physically, to host seminars. A lot of writing and planning went down the drain. Oh well.

And then I recalculated. But that was not easy, and I would not have liked to go through that without the help and comfort of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. No one should have to do that kind of thing alone. And you don’t have to either.

Heavenly Father,

Please be with me as I recalculate my route. Lord. I realize that my road is in Your hands — help me to choose the route Your planned for me. And Lord, help me to reach my final destination — my eternal home in the arms of Jesus, my Lord and Savior.

Amen

Abraham rolled a soft rock over a thousand-mile journey

² Then God said, Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.

³ Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.

— Gen. 22:2-3 [NIV]

Should one perhaps not dare to speak about Abraham? I think one should. If I myself were to talk about him I would first depict the pain of the trial. For that I would suck all the fear, distress, and torment out of the father's suffering, like a leech, in order to be able to describe all that Abraham suffered while still believing. I would remind people that the journey lasted three days and well into the fourth; yes, those three-and-a-half days should be infinitely longer than the two thousand years separating me from Abraham.

— Søren Kierkegaard², Fear and Trembling, Loc. 174.0

Not all pain is physical. There are some forms of hurt that are not physical, but which the sufferer would gladly exchange for all the torments of a Medieval dungeon. The existential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard writes about one of these cases – probably one of the worst that can be imagined. When God tells Abraham to go and sacrifice his only son Isaac, the love of his life, he might as well have told Abraham to set himself on fire.

Now, there is no way to discuss all the aspects of this command of God on this single page (Kierkegaard and any others wrote entire books about it), but we can set aside a moment to just try and imagine how Abraham suffered. There was no quick ride to the place of execution, no gun to put the boy down, perhaps surreptitiously from behind. It was a long walk, and it must have felt like a thousand-mile journey.

Today, people still suffer emotional pain — perhaps more than ever. Think about what a mother goes through when her child is abducted; what she suffers until the body is found — or not found.

Perhaps you have suffered this kind of pain or are in its clutches as you read this. That is why I ask every reader of this book to pray with me for people whose pain is inside, where only they face it in the small hours. If you yourself are in that number — we are praying for you.

Heavenly Father,

Some of us carry burdens that only you can see. Lord Jesus, You know how much that hurts, because you went through all of it even before you suffered the physical pain of the cross. Oh Almighty God, please send your Holy Spirit today to bring blessed relief for that sort of pain.

Amen

God will help you with that rock

⁶ Sacred Scripture is a great book about suffering. Let us quote from the books of the Old Testament a few examples of situations which bear the signs of suffering, and above all moral suffering: the danger of death, the death of one's own children and, especially, the death of the firstborn and only son; and then too: the lack of offspring, nostalgia for the homeland, persecution and hostility of the environment, mockery and scorn of the one who suffers, loneliness and abandonment; and again: the remorse of conscience, the difficulty of understanding why the wicked prosper and the just suffer, the unfaithfulness and ingratitude of friends and neighbors; and finally: the misfortunes of one's own nation.

⁷ As we see from the examples quoted, we find in Sacred Scripture an extensive list of variously painful situations for man … It can be said that man suffers whenever he experiences any kind of evil.

— Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris³.

Suffering doesn’t always involve pain or harm to your own body. Some of the worse suffering imaginable can be experienced while you’re quite healthy. Think about the Old Testament figure of Job. In the first phase of his affliction, he was doing quite well, physically. Then he lost everything he had, and on top of that his ten children – all ten of them in one accident. That almost did him in.

No one who has read up to this part would deny that he suffered almost beyond human endurance. But note two things: First, what befell him was evil in nature, having been instigated and caused by the Adversary, and second, it didn’t touch his body in any way. Initially.

But it did crush his soul. And that is the point Pope John Paul is making in this letter to the world. You can cause a human being to suffer to the point where she kills herself, for instance, by just keeping on posting nasty things about her on the Internet. That is evil being perpetrated against the soul of a human being; against a living soul created by God.

Pope John Paul II goes on to give a list of moral evils from the Old Testament (and he calls them just a few examples). I have translated his list from stilted Vatican language into everyday English.

My life is in danger.

I fear for the lives of my children.

We’re unable to have children.

I long for my home country.

I’m being persecuted. People are hostile towards me.

People mock me and are scornful of my suffering.

I am lonely and abandoned.

My conscience is torturing me because of things I did.

I just can’t understand why wicked people prosper and good people suffer.

My friends and neighbors turned out to be unfaithful and ungrateful.

I suffer when I think about the misfortunes of my mother country.

Which items in the list torment you? I have some items in that list. These things bring tears to my eyes, and have nothing to do with my physical pain, which is a different story.

In the Bible story of Job, the Adversary challenges God: Job is so good and righteous, he says, but it is only because You have protected him from evil all these years. But just touch him with evil and see how he falls apart. He’ll curse You to Your face when his good luck runs out. Aren’t human beings frail creatures? You don’t even have to touch them physically to destroy them!

So, in Job 1:12 (NIV), Satan gets permission from God to do moral damage to Job to see if his faith will keep him true to God:

¹² The Lord said to Satan, Very well, then, everything he has is in your power, but on the man himself do not lay a finger.

Read the Book of Job to see how that turned out: only after rebelling and shaking his fist at God for this injustice did Job turn back to God. And so triumphed in the end

The problem in destroying an innocent person with moral evil is when that person lawyers up with God. When the person under attack takes refuge under the wings of the Almighty, no attack can touch him or her. That’s what Job did, eventually. And that is where you and I need to be when the storms of moral evil come to get us. Then we can peep from under the wings of our mama eagle and say to the falcon: You want a piece of me? Bring it on, buddy!

Read the Psalms for many examples of this very satisfying behavior. If you browse through the Psalms, you encounter such an affirmation already in Psalm 3:6 (NIV):

⁶ I will not fear though tens of thousands assail me on every side.

You are not helpless against moral evil. Flee to God! Study his book. And above all, pray. Pray day and night. He will come to your aid.

Heavenly Father,

I will not cease praying, because You have promised to listen and help. I am also listening for Your voice, o Father. Please help me to understand when You speak to me.

O Lord, the police can sometimes protect me, and doctors can sometimes heal me. But only You can relieve the pain I feel in my heart in the deep of the night.

Heavenly Father, I beg You to heal my soul.

Amen

Hard rocks and soft rocks often go together

¹⁶ To the woman he said, I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. ¹⁷ To Adam he said, Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’ Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life.

— Genesis 3:16–20 (NIV)

Pain has plagued us throughout the history of our species. We spend our lives trying to avoid it, and, from one point of view, what we call happiness may be just the absence of pain. Yet it is difficult to define pain, which may be sharp, dull, shooting, throbbing, imaginary, or referred.

We have many pains that surge from within as cramps and aches. And we also talk about emotional distress as pain. Pains are often combined, the emotional with the physical, and the physical with the physical.

— Ackerman, Diane, and Nicolette Schwartz, A Natural History of the Senses. Loc. 164.0 / 699⁴.

It seems that merely to be alive is to be in pain! And that may very well be true. What is always sad to me is that people who are not experiencing pain are not aware of the fact that they are not experiencing pain. Nobody walks down the street and exclaims: Aha! My left hip doesn’t hurt at all! Unless she has just had hip surgery, of course, and after a long course of physical therapy she can only now walk without pain.

But the fact that one is not aware of non-pain is blessing in itself. Without pain, its distraction is not there to dog your every step and to befuddle each thought. You are free and clear to do what you want and to go where you will.

Have you ever thought of this: what we call shallowness is, in fact, an absence of pain. Two teenagers with nothing better to do than discuss at length a pair of jeans are not so much inexperienced and unsophisticated as just pain free. They chirp away without an inkling of the darker days that come later. And we old sophisticats might scorn them for being fairly mindless, but later on they will think back with delight at the days of their youth when they had nothing better to do than chatter about a pair of jeans. And be pain-free.

Having said that: I cannot think of a single noble deed or work of art that has ever come from this non-pain state. Can you? Looking from that angle, it might just be true that to be alive is to be in pain.

I