Why Rocks are Better Than Cheetos (Or How to Find Your Way Home When You Get Lost)
I found the first stone by the table, right beneath the chair where Daddy sits when he’s home for diner. Caked with mud and a light dusting of sand, it looked like a recent excavation right from the sandbox.
I picked it up, tossed it out the screen door and headed for the laundry room.
I didn’t get far before I found another grungy rock hovering at the edge of the stairs that lead to the basement. Oddly, this rock sat on top of an orange smear in the carpet.
I pocketed the second stone and followed a polka-dot trail of stones and odd orange smears down the steps and around the corner into the family room.
My pockets were bulging by the time I bent down to pick up the last rock plopped in front of the storage closet that sits beneath the stairs.
Murmurs and giggles escaped from the other side of the closed door. Muffled voices were drowned out by the sound of shuffling and banging against narrow walls.
I leaned in to eavesdrop on the closet dwellers. Forgetting my pocketful of rocks, I clattered against the door and realized my spy routine was over.
The door knob turned slowly, cautiously.
Hannah peered out from the dark closet cave, an annoyed expression on her face.
“Mom? What are you doing here?”
“I could ask the same of you…”
I glanced at my daughter’s interesting outfit and tried not to laugh out loud at the serious face before me.
My eight-year-old was clad in an atrocious pink floral bathrobe that I remember my mother wearing when I was a kid (guess the kids have been excavating ancient treasures from Grandma’s closet again!), topped off with my favorite ruffled apron and a shiny red dress hat.
“I’m trying to get the kids down for a nap,” Hannah snapped in her high-and-important- sounding grown up voice.
Rocks fell from my pocket as I squatted to see beyond the bathrobe warden.
Josh and Maggie were huddled in the back corner of the closet, bundled in blankets like newborns swaddled for a long winter’s nap.
Even in the near dark, I could see that Maggie’s face was covered with a splattered orange mustache.
“So you’re playing house?” I asked, still confused about the rocks.
“Not just house, Mom,” Hannah explained. “We’re on a camping trip right now.”
She glanced at her unruly children rolling around the back of the closet and apologetically began to close the door.
“I really have to go.”
“Okay,” I agreed and backed away.
Just then, Hannah spied the rocks in my pocket.
“Mo-om, where did you get those rocks?”
“They were lying all over the floor,” I said.
“Mo-om” my daughter cried, “That was our special path back home!”
“Home?”
“Yeah. We’re camping, remember?”
“Oh, yes, of course,” I said, willing myself back into her world of make-believe.
Hannah bent to grab a rock that had fallen from my pocket and then, with an exasperated sigh, she began to shed light on all the stray stones on my stair-steps.
“Well, we needed to mark our trail, Mom. You, know, like Hansel and Gretel? Because I can’t just take my children camping and get lost in the woods. Then how would we find our way back home?”
I nodded as if sowing stone trails across the carpet were the most natural thing in the world.
And Hannah continued, “So, first I used Cheetos to mark our route, but those Cheetos were kind of like the bread crumbs that Hansel dropped.
Maggie just kept eating them all and pretty soon I realized that we needed a trail that Mags wouldn’t want to eat.
So I got all those rocks from the pile by the bushes and I asked Josh to help me drop them in all the right places so we would be able to find our way home when our camping trip was done.”
I nodded again, this time covering my mouth so the camping mama wouldn’t notice the giggles her real mama was trying to swallow.
Hannah glanced at my bulging pockets and stroked the rock in her hand. Then she tossed the stone on the floor in frustration and slumped down like a drama queen weak in the knees.
“But now you’ve wrecked it all! And we’ll never find our way home in time for dinner.”
I pictured that first little rock that had been planted quietly beneath Rob’s chair and I suddenly understood its purpose.
Before my thespian added hysterical sobs to her impromptu performance, I stepped out of the closet and assured her that I would return the stones in my pocket to their proper places. (Which, by the way, was not a difficult task thanks to the bright orange Cheeto stains that marked every rock’s spot on my cream carpeted stairwell)
So I took those filthy stones and strewed them all the way back across my house to the kitchen table where I plopped the last one right beneath Daddy’s chair.
And sure enough, when the aroma of our evening meal wafted beyond the kitchen walls, my campers found there way right back to the dinner table, thanks to those well-places stones.
Later that evening when all of the campers had been tucked in bed and the rocks had been collected from the stairs and returned to the landscaping out front, I thought about my daughter’s traveling strategy.
And I realized that God uses rocks to lead His children home, as well. He may not have asked the Israelites to strew their stones across cream carpet, but He did command them to stack those rocks high at Gilgal.
When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the LORD said to Joshua, “Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, from right where the priests are standing, and carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight…
In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.
So the Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, as the LORD had told Joshua; and they carried them over with them to their camp, where they put them down. Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been in the middle of the Jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant had stood. And they are there to this day.
I’ve often wondered if God asked His children to haul those muddy rocks right out of the Jordan River and plop them in the Promised Land because He knew that His children were prone to wander. And quickly forget their way.
Even when they’d finally arrived in that place flowing with milk and honey, God’s chosen ones camped out in closets of sin and crouched in dark places of doubt.
But thanks to those river rocks, they could always find their way back to their Father’s chair if they chose to.
All they needed to do was remember.
Rocks remind us to remember and remembering always leads us back to the One who has never left.
On the tenth day of the first month the people went up from the Jordan and camped at Gilgal on the eastern border of Jericho. And Joshua set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken out of the Jordan. He said to the Israelites, “In the future when your descendants ask their parents, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ For the LORD your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The LORD your God did to the Jordan what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over. He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the LORD is powerful and so that you might always fear the LORD your God.”
I’ve been feeling sort of lost lately, wondering which road is mine to take and why all the trails look so long and hard.
But just yesterday I stacked some stones. I pondered the things He has done lately.
I named them one by one, my glimpses of Glory along this path of grit.
I named them one by one, my glimpses of Glory along this path of grit.
Without even realizing where I was headed, I followed that trail of praise right to my Abba’s chair.
And took my place at His table, right where I belong.
I’m saving a spot for you, too, my friend. Just in case you’re feeling a bit lost or just longing to find your way back home.
Don’t worry, I’ve left you a trail.
(I ate all the Cheetos, but if you’ll look closely, you’ll find some stones)
Just follow the rocks and meet me for dinner!
The Overflow:
Here’s the story I’ll tell my friends when they come to worship, and punctuate it with Hallelujahs: Shout Hallelujah, you God-worshipers; give glory, you sons of Jacob; adore him, you daughters of Israel.
He has never let you down, never looked the other way when you were being kicked around.
He has never wandered off to do his own thing; he has been right there, listening.
Here in this great gathering for worship I have discovered this praise-life.
And I’ll do what I promised right here in front of the God-worshipers.
Down-and-outers sit at God‘s table and eat their fill. Everyone on the hunt for God is here, praising him. -Psalm 22:24-26, The Message
Sharing God-Bumps in community with Jennifer at Getting Down With Jesus
stacked rock photo credit: © James Hearn | Dreamstime Stock Photos
Are you serious???
This is another great family night!
How did I ever find such a fantastic friend? You feed my soul every day!!!
Haha love it!
What a sweet story, Alicia. I have a house full of budding thespians, myself. Never a dull moment. 🙂
Love what you said about our remembrance leading us back to our Father.
And that feeling lost thing is not the end of the story . . .
After all, only the lost can be found.
What a darling story. And a good mama you are, to put all the stones back. I’m still laughing about the consumption of the Cheeto trail. 🙂
That was a great post. I love rocks, too…
Rock4Today!