The Malibu rock
They called it The Malibu Rock, a huge chunk of granite that hovered above California’s Pacific Coast Highway, near the town of Malibu. One day a homeowner, observing that with the next rain that rock could come crashing down on his home, filed a class action suit against the highway department, charging it with liability in the event the rock should fall.
The highway department responded and sent two of their most powerful bulldozers to dislodge the rock. Unable to budge it, the bulldozers were joined by a powerful helicopter with cables an inch thick. Still, nothing happened. Finally, massive streams of water were directed at the rock, and after four days the bulldozers and helicopter thrust their combined might at the rock, which gave way and rolled right into the middle of the highway.
Brett Livingston Strong, a 25-year-old Australian, saw the story on TV and offered to buy the rock for $100. The highway department decided it was a good deal and promptly took the offer, informing the buyer he had four days to move the 20-ton rock. Strong convinced the city that he could turn the rock into the figure of a man whom the rock epitomized. “The rock reminds me of John Wayne,” he said, “tough to bring down.” For four months he worked on that rock and gradually the image of “The Big Duke” emerged. John Wayne saw the rock just before he died and said, “I like it; I really like it.” Strong sold the carved rock to a philanthropist for $1 million. What most saw as a hazard and liability, a young Australian saw as a possibility.
If you’re about to give up on someone or yourself, don’t. God is still in the life-changing business. He doesn’t see you as a hazard or a liability. He sees you as one great big possibility!
Used with permission from Guidelines International Ministries. To learn more about Guidelines and the ministry, send an e-mail to info@guidelines.org. You may also visit www.guidelines.org.
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory. – 2 Corinthians 3:18, nkjv