“So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall,” the apostle Paul cautions us in our epistle lesson today. How secure is our footing; how slippery is our slope? The season of Lent provides the opportunity for us to look at where we are standing—at our stand point. If we have eyes to see and ears to hear, we discover that the place on which we are standing is holy ground--in the presence of God—whether, like Moses, we know it or not.

Thinking of my stand point, I am reminded of that old gospel hymn by Edward Mote, “On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.” That chorus is based on the parables of Jesus (Mt.7:24-27, Lk.6:47-49) where the wise one builds his house on a rock so that it withstands the storms and floods; not so with the foolish one whose house is built on sand and founders. How firm is my foundation, yours? Is it deep enough to reach the bedrock of God’s steadfast love, to survive the tumultuous storms life may send our way? Can we recognize and acknowledge the holy ground on which we are standing here and now?

God is the very ground of our being. Do we find ourselves grounded in God’s love, or are we “wasting the soil” in which we are planted like the barren fig tree in our gospel lesson? In our Lenten self-examination, if we find ourselves in the latter camp, may we look to the One that Paul calls the spiritual rock that was the source of the living water to the Israelites on their wilderness journey, to Christ Jesus trusting in him to cultivate our roots and nourish us on the way to maturity and fruitfulness, to lift us up if we fall and set us back on the firm foundation of God’s presence in our lives.