“Watch closely. I’m laying a foundation in Zion, a solid granite foundation, squared and true. And this is the meaning of the stone: a trusting life won’t topple.” – Isaiah 28:16 (MSG)

It was a pretty typical Monday afternoon. Mondays are my day off, so I was home with my wife and we were babysitting our grandbaby, Simon. He was taking a nap on Nycki and I was doing some reading next to them when the crash happened that, quite literally, shook the living room windows.

Have you ever seen something that rendered you speechless? I am pretty sure this was one of those moments. What I saw through the windows looking into the backyard was the top of one of our palm trees had just snapped off and crashed down onto our patio.

When we purchased our home several years back, we fell in love with these two giant palm trees in our backyard. They immediately reminded us of one of our favorite places that we traveled to many times to do mission work, Haiti. We loved the sound of the breeze blowing through those palms. On this Monday, however, the breeze was apparently blowing a little too hard and the top of the palm just snapped off and fell right into our pool. Had it fallen five feet in another direction, it would have been in our bedroom! Thankfully, it landed where it did and there was no damage to the home.

I was thinking about this image of the fallen palm in relation to a verse found in Isaiah.

The context is this: The prophet Isaiah is writing to the people of God who find themselves in Babylonian captivity and he warns them of the repercussions of spiritual complacency and disobedience. Yet, within the warning and judgment to come, there is a beautiful prophecy of hope to be found in the promised Cornerstone – a clear word pointing to Jesus Christ. Isaiah says that, in this Cornerstone, “the one who relies on it will never be shaken.” (Isaiah 28:16)

The Message version reads this way: “a trusting life won’t topple.”

I love that promise.

You know, it’s not a matter of if you will experience a storm in your life; it’s only a matter of when. But here’s the good news for us as followers of Jesus: A trusting life won’t topple. No matter the storms we experience, the one who calmed the wind and the waves in the Gospel story is the same one who speaks peace over our lives today. That’s what Jesus offers to us all.

Stand in that truth and rest on that foundation.

– Mark

To go deeper, read Matthew 7:24-27; John 16:33; Isaiah 26:3.