Rock Solid or Shifting Sand?
Let’s talk again about what G. K. Chesterton wrote in his autobiography about a person with whom he had been acquainted:
But I think he thought that the object of opening the mind is simply opening the mind. Whereas I am incurably convinced that the object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.
The idea of shutting our minds on something solid reminds me of a wonderful Christian hymn I grew up singing. Edward Mote wrote it around 1834:
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
But wholly lean on Jesus’ Name.
On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.
When darkness veils His lovely face,
I rest on His unchanging grace.
In every high and stormy gale,
My anchor holds within the veil.
On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.
His oath, His covenant, His blood,
Support me in the whelming flood.
When all around my soul gives way,
He then is all my Hope and Stay.
On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.
When He shall come with trumpet sound,
Oh may I then in Him be found.
Dressed in His righteousness alone,
Faultless to stand before the throne.
On Christ the solid Rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand;
All other ground is sinking sand.
That song describes the way to “shut our minds” on something solid.
Among our many opportunities as parents is the opportunity to train our children to discern what is solid and what is unstable shifting sand.
 Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine
and acts on them, may be compared
to a wise man who built his house on the rock.
And the rain fell, and the floods came,
and the winds blew and slammed against that house;
and yet it did not fall,
for it had been founded on the rock.
Everyone who hears these words of Mine
and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man
who built his house on the sand.
The rain fell, and the floods came,
and the winds blew and slammed against that house;
and it fell—and great was its fall.
Matthew 7:24-27