Building on the Embankment
GCD Newsletter, January 12th 2023
Less than a fortnight into the new year, and the park behind our house has flooded deep enough to row a boat in. My wife and soon-to-be-sister-in-law did just that. They dragged an inflatable dingy all the way there and disappeared, only to arrive back soaked through and full of memories.
On the day that it got to its highest point, I visited two points further along the river, one close to some houses in town and another outside our local mall. At the former I was amazed at how close the river was now to the very top of the embankment. What has caused many to panic throughout the week, had all been planned for decades, maybe even centuries before by those who came before us. This wasn’t the first time the river had threatened flooding, and it wouldn’t be the last. It turned out that the very reason our park had flooded, was because it had been built for that purpose. Better to flood a wide stretch of open land than the houses further down the line.
The area outside the mall was a different story.
Around a decade ago, it was decided that in order to make “Riverside” more appealing to the public, they would build some extra land into the embankment to make space for small businesses and stalls nearer to the river. They’d built far enough down that it sat around the line that the river usually rose to. Years went by and all was fine, after all, the river never gets too high anyway. The last I counted, five small buildings had flooded, and sandbags were being hastily bought to protect the others.
In the book of Matthew it says:
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.”
Jesus had encouraged his hearers, by way of a parable, to be like the men who built that embankment all those years ago. They knew floods would come one day and so built the embankment high and ready for what was to come. This year, you can do the same. Floods, and storms, and politics, and church difficulties, and Easter, and Thanksgiving, and Christmas will come again, and so why not decide now to build your house—or your embankment—on the rock.
Grace and Peace,
Adsum Try Ravenhill is married to Anna and together they are passionate about seeing young men and women discipled within the context of the local church. You can find Adsum through his writing at The Raven’s Writing Desk and you can also find Adsum’s articles for GCD here.
Last Week at GCDiscipleship.com
How Spiritual Landmarks Help Us Navigate Life When It’s Dark
By Jana Carlson
The start of a new year can sometimes feel a bit like wandering into darkness. We may have plans, goals, or even resolutions, but the reality is that our future is as clear to us as a misty, moonless night in a strange land. How will we navigate the next twelve months when we take a wrong turn, are blindsided by the unexpected, or find ourselves in uncharted territory?
Tolkien’s Treebeard and The Root Problem of Hastiness
By Nicholas Lewis
Deep in the pages of The Two Towers and mid-way through the epic Lord of the Rings trilogy, we find the hobbits Merry and Pippin rushing away into a dark forest to escape the clutches of the Uruk-hai after having been taken captive in the first book. The forest is ancient, dark, foreboding. Its name: Fangorn Forest. They’d heard the tales before, rumors of magical stirrings and strange creatures that roamed around within. It’s said that even the trees themselves move and speak.
