STONES OF THE HOLY LAND

How long have we been seeing the rock throwing battles in the Holy Land? Five, ten, fifteen years?

Not as swift as bullets are the rocks, yet thrown with such force, should one hit a head, it could be as effective as a bullet.

Where do all the rocks come from? Are the same ones thrown back and forth all the time? Are they retrieved and used again as did Indians their arrowheads? Are there rock gatherers employed to go outside the cities and towns, scour the rocky hillsides and bring them in to stash behind barricades like snowballs behind snow forts? Are they gathered from within the towns from demolished buildings? Uprooted streets?

What Holy Land stones do we think about except the above? The 12 stones carried up out of the Jordan River which had stopped flowing to allow the Israelites to cross over into the Holy Land were piled at Gilgal as a monument. We remember them. Wonder where they are now? Rocks don't deteriorate fast.

There's the Ebenezer stone Samuel placed at the site of a battle between his forces and the Philistines. It was so named because Ebenezer means "the stone of help." Help, in this case, because as Samuel, the victor in the battle, said "The Lord has certainly helped us!" Wonder where that stone is now? Would it be big or little? Probably big. If so, was it broken into smaller pieces later, to be thrown at enemies or did it just sink into the ground?

There was the stone Jacob rested his head on one night while on his way to Paddam-Aram. Did he, for comfort, pad the stone in any way or just lay his bare head upon it? Anyway, he had that famous dream we still sing about and busy our hands sometimes with making twine string Jacob's Ladders.

There was the little stone young David put into his sling and killed the Philistine giant, Goliath. There were the stones thrown at Stephen, the first Christian martyr, until he was dead. Were those blood-stained stones used over and over for such wretched purposes?

Then there are the famous stones we do not see, but remember. Those were the stones to be cast at the woman caught in adultery by anyone who had not so sinned.

There are the wailing wall stones, still intact as laid, a remnant of old Jerusalem. Jews now go there to pray, to weep, to lament, to converse.

I saw via T.V. some Israeli soldiers deliberately breaking the arm of a captive, stretching the arm on a rock and pounding it at a strategic place with a stone. Where did this stone come from? Could it have washed up from the flooding Jordan? Could it have been an unearthed remnant of Solomon's old, glorious temple?

The picture was infamous as the Vietnam man being shot in the head in the middle of a street, no one else around and the little abandoned child sitting amongst the ruins of war, crying, no one else around.

The Dome of the Rock is built over a stone believed to be some ancient rock where sacrifices were made -- lambs, bulls, goats.

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is thought to have been built where rocky Golgotha once held three crosses.

Where is the greatest stone of all? The rock that was rolled away from Jesus' tomb? Did it stay there in place awaiting the death of its owner, Joseph of Arimathaea?. Is it far beneath the ground now? Put to some other use? It is the one to hold in our mind's eye, in our hearts.

I have a small collection of rocks, one from the shore of Galilee, one from the sides of Mt. Vesuvius, a piece of the Berlin wall, etc. Sometimes I lay them all out in a row, leaving a blank space for the greatest stone of all. That space, especially on Easter morning, seems to glow in its vacancy as if a presence is there.

REJOICE!