At one point or another, sometime in life sooner or later, no matter what we create that we depend on the most—it all gets shaken.
For “churchgoers” it is the Sunday morning “Churchianity” culture that gets shaken. For the Buddhist it is Buddhism. For the Atheist it is godlessness. For the Hedonist it is the claim that indulgence gratifies. For the one who writes his own morals, his morals fail him and his life implodes. For the free spirit, he gets crushed by bureaucracy or starved by the famine. For the one who prepares, his storehouses get robbed. There will inevitably be times in life that whatever things we depend on get shaken; and whatever lasts through the shaking is of God.
Jesus told a parable of two houses, one built on sand and the other built on rock. Not “if”—when the storm came, the house built on sand crashed into a terrible wreck; the house built on rock stood sound. Jesus explained that to follow his teaching was to build a house that lasts. Remember, Jesus was a carpenter.
In his parable, the house built on rock was not exempt from the storm; it went through it. The storm was not an attack or hardship visiting itself upon the wisely-built house. The storm was from God. The only attack and hardship came from the wisely-built house upon the foolishly-built house because surviving the storm proved the last word. It was through the storm that the house wisely built on rock showed it’s “revenge by massive amounts of success” upon the house so foolishly built on sand.
It’s thinkable that the house on sand was large and on beachfront property at the same price of the smaller, less-scenic house cut into rock. But, Jesus makes no comment on the structural style of the houses, only the ground on which they were built. The key to surviving the inevitable storms of testing is not some unfathomable, expensive, elitist mystery—it is a simple choice.
Don’t let success lower your guard. The storms and shaking will come. You must be prepared, not by skills or “outsmarting”, but by being strong from simple choices of priority.
Matthew 7:24-27, Luke 6:46-49