Get off the Rubber Rock!

It was a sunny day, and many children at the park were enjoying the water fountain play area. They were barefoot, of course.

Not far off was another fun feature: little rubber rock mounds. I soon learned for myself that walking onto rubber rock on a sunny summer day was not comfortable in bare feet. So there I was with my grandchildren, all of us wearing sandals on one of these hot hills.

Then a girl who looked about five years old ran up onto this part and immediately looked distressed. She was in bare feet, and was hopping from one foot to the other, and whimpering in pain. I thought she would run off the rubber rock for relief, but she stayed there, doing her dance of pain.

I was feeling her pain, and was about to go over and pick her up and put her down on cooler ground, but I stopped myself. A stranger picking her up might have distressed her even more. And a parent watching from a distance might have felt much more than distress. These days, helping out a child is fraught with dangers.

So instead, I said something to urge her to move off the rubber rock. But she stayed there hopping her feet alternately off the scorching rubber rock. By the look of her, she may not have even understood what I was saying, but I could understand what she was experiencing…and it pained me. (She did find her way off eventually, and while it seemed like forever to me, it probably only took less than a minute.)

Isn’t that a lot like most people in this world? They find themselves suffering the pain of being where they’ve got themselves, and instead of changing their position, they hop up and down where they are, continuing to suffer for it. Our Creator has told us how to get out of the sorry state we’re in (or avoid it in the first place), but people ignore him and just hop up and down on the spot in pain and distress.

Unlike me, Jesus Christ stepped in himself to help us. And he did get in trouble for it — and suffered horribly for it — but some of us deeply appreciate that he showed us the way to get out of our sad situation. For me personally, it’s wonderful to have been relieved of the anguished state I once was in, but it’s awfully hard to watch others stay where they are, suffering for it.

“Get off the rubber rock!”

It’ll only hurt you more if you stay there.