Imagine you are on a golf course on a beautiful day. Today is the first nice day of the year so you are anxious to get out there and knock some cobwebs off your clubs. You are enjoying the weather and hitting well when…it happens. You step on a sinkhole and fall 18 feet into a dark, muddy pit. For the next 20 minutes, your friends try to figure out where you went and how to rescue you! Not the ending you were expecting to that story? Sound far-fetched? Actually, this is exactly what happened to Mark Mihal, on the 14th hole of a golf course in Waterloo, Ill.
Don’t worry, Mihal is ok. His friends were able to find some rope and rescue him with only a dislocated shoulder. Apparently, while incredibly disturbing to most of us, these type of sinkholes aren’t all that uncommon is southwestern Illinois! Sam Panno, a senior geochemist with the Illinois State Geological Survey, was quoted as saying “subsurface limestone that dissolves from acidic rainwater, snowmelt, and carbon dioxide” can cause the ground to collapse. In addition, old underground mines frequently cause the earth to settle. Turns out that the ground we are walking on isn’t always as solid as we think!
Jesus tells us to be sure we are standing on firm rock and not sinking sand (Matthew 7:24-27). Too often, we trust that the ground beneath us is solid without really knowing what lies beneath. Mark Mihal had played this course several times and had no reason to doubt that the ground was solid. Perhaps, though, we are playing games in life in areas about which we have been warned by God’s word. And even though we have played those games before and we didn’t fall or stumble, God’s word promises us that it is simply a matter of time.
Those who rebelled against God have been swallowed in the sea (Exodus 14), the sand (Numbers 16), and Hades (Luke 16:23). Are you standing on solid ground today or a sink hole of rebellious living? Why not check out the true rock today? If I can help, let me know.
