EARTHQUAKE! I remember feeling an earthquake in the very first week I lived in California. It was terrifying! The house I was in felt like it was being tossed back and forth like a ball of slime. The earthquake jolt later struck a chord in my heart when I heard these song lyrics on the radio – “We were living on a fault line and I thought the fault was all mine.”
Fault Lines
The definition of an actual fault line is a break or fracture in the ground that occurs when the Earth’s tectonic plates move or shift, and are areas where earthquakes are likely to occur. “A new fault forms when the stress on the rock is great enough to cause a fracture.”
Every thing that happens in the earth and in nature, also happens in our lives. The earth and nature are living external examples for us, to show us what happens to us internally.
When we have a break or a fracture in our emotions or our well being, it causes our thinking to shift and our hearts to slowly crack and break. In a sense, it causes an inner fault line to form.
An earthquake really takes a long time to show itself – there are a lot of signs, shakings, tremors, shifting, and breaks before the BIG one actually hits.
An interesting thought – in most earthquakes the faults themselves don’t even break through the earth’s surface, so aren’t seen by the naked eye. In other words when concerning US, alot of damage can be happening within that no one around us can see.
Sometimes I feel like this. Anyone else? Like my heart is balancing on a fault line and when anything goes wrong, I can always trace it back to me; my fault. A fault in a human is basically a defect, a weakness. It is something in our core foundation that will start the same process as a fault line.
A Human Earthquake
A human earthquake might look something like this. A child is verbally abused and grows up under the umbrella of bullying. He never understands or knows his own worth. With every hurtful word raised against him, the foundation of his being starts to fracture. His body ages but his poor abused soul remains captive to the hate sown there.
Two things generally happen in a situation like this – the victim of verbal abuse will himself grow up to do likewise, as it is all he knows. The other option is pushing down the pain into some dark corner, where without healing it will continue to cause his soul’s decay. More often than not, you may not have a clue of that level of deep rooted pain that is destroying someone from the inside out. Until. Until that day when something triggers all the rocks in their soul to shift, and the fault line of their foundation to pull apart. The earthquake of a broken soul.
Ultimate Disaster Plan
God sent us Jesus as our ultimate disaster prevention! He will cleanse our ever wandering hearts, heal our broken places, fill in the cracks and hold us together. He is the only hope for the human soul. That’s it. Nothing else stops the shifting of our foundation or fills the void or cracks.
These verses say it all – all of what God does for the human soul that surrenders to Him. Surrender just means to let go. Here God, I give you my fault lines. “LORD, You alone are my portion and my cup; You make my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the LORD, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I keep my eyes always on the LORD. With Him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because You will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will You let your faithful one see decay. You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.” (Psalm 16: 5-11)
The end of our journey is meant to reveal or uncover our purpose to us, as we trust Him to not allow our fault lines to swallow us up. He has always “looked beyond our faults and saw our need.”
