The Canadian Shield, a massive expanse of central and eastern Canada from the Great Lakes to the Artic and Greenland, “constitutes the largest mass of exposed Precambrian rock on the face of the Earth,” according to the Britannica Online Encyclopedia. I became familiar with the term “Canadian Shield” as a sixth grade Social Studies teacher. The first unit of study in sixth grade Social Studies is the regions of North America. But in reality, I had learned about the Canadian Shield as a child, though not through school. My family vacationed in Ontario each summer and I experienced the beauty of the many lakes and deep forests that intersperse the endless rock ledges and boulder shorelines of the region. Rock outcroppings fill the gorgeous landscape of the Canadian Shield!
In the last decade or more, I have revisited this area of Ontario several times. I began to notice peculiar piles of rocks stacked on the exposed ridges edging the highway. Mile after mile sat columns of fist-sized stones, stacked usually less than a foot tall, in a graduated pile with no other ornamentation. A bit of quick internet searching informed me that these stacks are called cairns. Cairns are an ancient construct for the purpose of marking a place, possibly a trail, border or as a memorium. Today, however, the stone-stacking trend represents mindfulness, or oneness with nature. Cairn building is popular in America and Europe as a form of New Age graffiti.
Stones and rocks are mentioned aplenty throughout the pages of Scripture, which is not surprising due to the prevalence of rock in the Middle East region! Having toured Israel and bordering areas, sometimes that’s all you see: rocks and desert! In Scripture, rocks play all kinds of roles.
There are warnings about rocks in the Bible. The second of the Ten Commandments forbids making an image, an idol, to worship as a god. Idols were carved from wood or stone, often overlaid with gold. Pillars, some likely constructed with stones, are often condemned for spiritual misuse. Rocks served as boundary markers and moving them was against the law.
But stones also serve purposes of importance and good in the Scriptures. More than forty times God is called the Rock or our Rock. Christ is called the Chief Cornerstone in the New Testament. God also instructed His people to use stones or pillars to mark a spot of significance. When God held back the flood-stage waters of the Jordan River for the Israelites to cross into the land God promised, he ordered the leaders to collect twelve shoulder-sized boulders from the dry riverbed. When the river began flowing again, they piled the stones at the exit point to commemorate the place where God had miraculously given them a dry path, recalling how He had also parted the Red Sea as the Israelites fled the Egyptian army. God wanted that rock monument to remind the people that God had saved and provided for them. See Joshua 4
This tells me that we are apt to forget. If a miraculous dry path through a raging river doesn’t stick in your mind, memory loss is a significant problem! We do suffer from spiritual amnesia. We forget what God has given us and more importantly, what God has done for us. We need mental, and maybe even actual rock piles, to trigger our recollection of God’s blessing and goodness. Not just at this season of thanksgiving, but every day, in our attitude and prayers, may we express rock solid gratitude.
They remembered God Most High, the mighty rock that kept them safe. Psalm 78 v 35 (Contemporary English Version)
