Daily Lesson for October 6, 2014

Today's daily lesson is from Luke chapter 6 verses 47 and 48:

47 Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: 48 he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built.

I saw in the news that the new One World Trade, also known as Freedom Tower, will open on October 27th. Now complete, the building is the fourth-tallest sky-scraper in the world, with a spire that reaches a symbolic 1776 feet.

How do such buildings ascend to such heights?

When I was just out of college I moved to New York and got a job as a gopher with a tour guide company. Hanging around some excellent New York City tour guides I learned a lot about the city. One of the things I learned is that the bedrock of the island is a special, and extremely strong rock called Manhattan Schist. (The tour guides loved to have student groups repeat the word "schist" - and the students loved it to.) Geologists say Manhattan Schist was formed under extremely high pressure beneath a Himalayan-tall mountain range which New York was a part of over 300 million years ago. Forged under great heat and pressure long ago, it is the strength of the rock beneath the surface that makes reaching to the skies possible.

And if we can't see the spiritual message in that then we're dumber than a rock.

Let's say it altogether now, "Schist."