Dry stone walls

The Scottish and English settlers, who sailed twelve thousand miles, in the mid-years of the 1800's, to find a new home in the southern regions of New Zealand, brought with them a distinctive way of building fences. Their efforts were both practical and visually pleasing. They cleared the land they intended to farm of all rocks, and used this material as the building blocks for fences. 

There was no mortar or cement used, just the largest stones placed in position on the ground, with smaller stones on top, until a solid barrier about four feet tall was erected. Often the walls were finished with a row of sharp vertical rocks placed on top. (poor man’s barbed wire) The resultant walls are as strong today as they were one hundred and fifty years ago. The building method is known simply today as "dry stone construction." 

Over the years since they were built the rock walls have become home to countless generations of field creatures, birds and lizards. The walls have provided shelter for sheep and cattle caught in the vicious winter storms that dump freezing snow over the pasture divided into neat paddocks by the work of the settler families. To the casual observer, perhaps driving past in a car, the dry rock walls appear lifeless and sterile. Spend a little time resting in the shadow of any one of these permanent fixtures of the landscape on a hot day, and one soon becomes aware of the "life force" within.
 
A colony of ants dragging the carcass of a hapless spider is watched with greedy interest by a fat sun warmed gecko, a field mouse nibbles on the seed head of a tare, and a rabbit chews rich grass, ever alert to the faint sounds of intrusion. Moss and lichen colonize and daub otherwise bare surfaces with life in its most basic form. 

The air is alive with the buzzing of crickets and dragonflies flit in their seemingly endless mating dance. A rich tapestry of birds’ twill and call to each other and in the distance an indolent hawk, riding the thermals, observes the scene, hopeful of an opportunity to feed. Weasels and ferrets stalk and prey on field mice and birds eggs. The heat from the rocks radiates and warms many a solitary hedgehog during the cool of the southern nights.  

"And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ." 1Corinithians 10:4

There are times when our own lives take on the appearance of a dry stone wall, and we feel barren, withered, without purpose. It is very easy at such times to assume that we are in fact dry and lifeless. It is during such seasons that we need to develop the ability to look beyond ourselves and see as others see. I have been amazed to hear brothers and sisters speak of my "faith" and how it’s sustaining them when I have "felt" the most faithless. Still others have been encouraged by my prayers when I have thought the "heavens were as brass" to my pleadings. My non-Christian friends have been sustained through crises when it has taken every ounce of will to just remember that Jesus is my Lord.

I have spoken a word of encouragement to a checkout operator when my spirit has been broken and empty. I have brought a "word of correction" to a wayward soul that has returned them to the "narrow way" when I have been only too aware of my own sinful state. I have been the "shelter" for others experiencing storms too terrible for them to withstand alone, when my own spirit has been caught, like Dorothy, in the eye of a tornado. I have stood "in the gap" for others when my own walls have been torn down by the actions of those trying to manipulate situations to their own advantage. Not only that, but I have brought "healing hands" into a pain filled life when my own physical pain has kept me awake nights.

If Christ is our sustainer, then we, regardless of our own perilous state, have the God- given ability to 
give another a refreshing draught of "living water" I have observed that it’s often when we are so

"low" ourselves, drained of any self-assurance that Jesus is magnified.

Do you feel like a "dry stone wall"- then it’s time to rejoice-for like the walls built by the pioneers of New Zealand-what is built will last, simply because it's built on the Rock we call Lord. 


And they remembered that God was their rock, and the Most High God was their redeemer.  Psalm 78:35 MKJV