Anchored To The Rock

¹“Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil;” (Hebrews 6:19). When we sin or otherwise fail to live up to Christlike standards of righteousness and perfection, we often describe this as a fall, as if we were struggling with all of our might to climb a cliff or a mountain but we lost our grip or our footing and fell. When people rock climb, they generally create for themselves anchors to protect themselves and mitigate the harmful effects of losing their grip and falling. There are various climbing tools and gadgets that can be used for this - cams, nuts, bolts, pitons - or even a partner who can hold onto the belay rope and pull it tight if they start to fall. If the climbers are very skilled and very lucky, they may go extended periods without ever slipping. They may even wonder if they need to go through the bother of hammering in new pitons every so many feet since they've been climbing for so long without a fall. But the best and the safest climbers make sure they are consistently updating their anchors as they climb because they know that no matter how good they are, sometimes they will lose their footing anyway and it's better to have a controlled fall of a few feet and be caught by their anchor then to fall all the way to the bottom of the cliff and get a serious injury or sure. All of the everyday boring things that we do on a daily or weekly basis as disciples of Christ - praying, studying the scriptures, going to church, loving and serving our neighbors - all of these things hammer new anchors into the rock as we make our climb towards perfection. The more the small and simple daily acts of devotion are a part of our lives, the less far we will fall when we occasionally lose our grip. No rock climber has gone their entire career without ever needing an anchor even once. We all slip and fall. The difference is that some of us are so diligent about setting up new anchors every few feet that when we fall, it's not very far and we hardly get bruised or banged up at all. But if we are very lax about doing the ordinary everyday things that build up our faith and our hope and help to anchor us to the Rock, then we're going to keep falling all the way to the bottom and seriously hurting ourselves. We have Jesus Christ as our very own partner to help belay us when we start to fall. But it will be much easier for Him to stop our fall if we are properly anchored. Even if we feel that we are good, even great, climbers and even if we find it beneath us or too boring or tedious or small to put in new anchors every couple of feet, let's just do the small and simple things every day regardless of how much or how little we feel that we need them. The more anchored we are, the less pressure we will feel to be perfect all of the time. Maybe it takes us ten or twenty tries to get over a particularly difficult ledge, but if we're only falling a couple of feet each time we lose our grip, then we won't feel that all is lost when we have to try many times to get it right. All of us are trying to get all of the way to the top, but if we will just work on keeping ourselves anchored to the Rock and keeping our hope and our faith in our Savior Jesus Christ, then we don't have to start every single climb all the way from the bottom.