In 1972, Mary Setterholm was the Women's US Surfing Champion. What followed was not the life anyone would have imagined for her. Her marriage fell apart. She was left alone with five children. The storms that came were severe — the kind that strip a life down to nothing and leave you wondering if anything solid remains.

But over time, Mary began to rebuild.

She started a surf school for inner city children — busing kids to the beach, teaching them to ride waves, introducing them to the joy of God's creation. City and county officials called it one of the most effective anti-gang programs they had ever seen. She took the thing she loved most — something that had once been entirely about herself — and turned it into a gift for others.

Mary didn't just rebuild her own life. She rebuilt it on something that held.

I think about my friend Joe, the baseball player, who spent years finding his footing after the thing he had built everything on gave way. Today he walks alongside recovering addicts with a grace and an understanding that only comes from having been there yourself.

These are not stories about people who had it easy or who never lost their way. They are stories about people who, at some point, decided to rebuild — and discovered that the rock was still there, waiting.

Jesus said, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock." (Matthew 7:24) It is never too late to hear those words. It is never too late to start building on them.

Prayer: Gracious God, we thank you for the people who have rebuilt — whose stories remind us that it is never too late to start again. Whatever has crumbled in our own lives, show us the rock that is still there. Give us the courage to build on it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

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There is an old story, told by Edwin Markham, about a wealthy man who wanted to do something generous for a carpenter who had served him well. He handed the carpenter the blueprints for a beautiful home — the best materials, no expense spared — and asked him to build it while he traveled abroad.

The carpenter saw an opportunity. He skimped on materials, hired cheap labor, covered the mistakes with paint. From the outside it looked fine. When the rich man returned, the carpenter handed over the keys with a satisfied smile.

The rich man took the keys — and handed them right back.

"The house is yours," he said. "A gift from me to you. You and your family are to live in it."

The carpenter stood there holding the keys to a house he knew better than anyone. Every corner that had been cut. Every flaw hidden under a coat of paint. Every place where the foundation was not quite what it should have been.

He would have to live there.

Markham concluded simply: you can imagine how often, in the years that followed, the carpenter regretted that he had only cheated himself.

Jesus said, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock." (Matthew 7:24) The house we are building — the life we are constructing day by day, choice by choice — is the one we are going to live in.

The good news is that we are not building alone. The master builder is with us — patient, generous, and more interested in our flourishing than in our failures. Whatever has been built poorly in the past, there is always more house to build.

Prayer: Loving God, help us to build with integrity — in the choices no one sees, in the corners we are tempted to cut, in the foundation we are laying day by day. We want to live in something that holds. Build it with us. Give us the wisdom and the courage to build it well. Amen.

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Psalm 61 is one of the most vulnerable prayers in scripture. The writer sounds genuinely desperate: "Hear my cry, O God. Listen to my prayer." And then this remarkable line: "Lead me to the rock that is higher than I."

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

I love that phrase because it is so completely honest about human limitation. The psalmist is not pretending to have it together. He is not offering a confident declaration of faith. He is simply admitting: I need something bigger than myself to stand on. Whatever I have been standing on is not enough. Lead me there.

Most of us arrive at that prayer eventually. The storms that try us to the core have a way of revealing what our foundations are actually made of. And in those moments — when the rain is falling and the winds are beating — we discover whether what we built on holds.

Jesus said that those who hear his words and act on them are like the wise man who built on rock. Not because they were stronger or more disciplined or had figured everything out. But because they had found something outside themselves to stand on. A foundation bigger than their own resources, their own wisdom, their own ability to hold things together.

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

That prayer is always available. And it is always answered.

Prayer: Hear our cry, O God. Listen to our prayer. In the moments when we reach the limits of what we can do on our own, lead us to the rock that is higher than we are. We cannot hold everything together. But you can; through Jesus Christ. Amen.

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I used to fish with a friend named Joe — a man with a deep, quiet faith who did a lot of work with recovering addicts, partly because he was one himself.

One afternoon out on the water he told me his story. In high school he had been a pitcher — good enough for a college scholarship, good enough that some pro teams were paying attention. Baseball was everything to him. His identity, his hope for the future, the thing that got him out of bed every morning.

Then in his last season of high school ball he developed severe tendonitis. Suddenly he couldn't pitch. The scholarship evaporated. The pro interest disappeared. And he told me: "Joe, when baseball was gone — life had no meaning. I didn't even want to live."

What followed were years of addiction and searching before he found his footing again — this time on something that held.

Jesus said, "When the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat against that house, it fell — and great was its fall." (Matthew 7:27) He was being honest about what happens when the thing we've built everything on suddenly gives way.

Most of us have something like that — the foundation we don't even realize we're standing on until it shifts. For some it is a career. For others it is a relationship, or a role — parent, provider, caregiver — that has quietly become the whole of their identity. There is nothing wrong with any of those things. The problem comes when they become load-bearing walls. When they go, everything goes with them. The question worth asking, before the storm rather than in the middle of it, is simply: is what I'm standing on solid enough to hold?  And if the answer gives you pause — it is not too late to shift the foundation. The rock is still there. The question is simply whether we are willing to build on it.

Prayer: Holy God, you know what we have built our lives on — sometimes better than we do. Show us where the ground is shifting beneath us. And lead us to the rock that is higher than ourselves. Amen.

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I'll never forget a friend telling me about visiting his father the summer after he retired. He said, “I can still picture him sitting at the breakfast table, cup of coffee in hand, staring at his day planner. But, the day planner was empty.”

He said his dad would be the first to tell you that part of his identity had been built on his career. For decades he had known exactly who he was and what he was doing and why it mattered. And then one morning he woke up and that was gone. He wasn't his professional title anymore. He was just himself — which turned out to be much harder than he expected.

I have known many people who have faced that same quiet crisis. A career ends. Children leave home. A relationship that defined everything suddenly isn't there. And the question that surfaces — who am I now? — can be surprisingly destabilizing.

Jesus said, "Everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock." (Matthew 7:24) The storms will come — he was clear about that. And in those moments, what's at the foundation is what matters.

The good news is that a foundation can be rebuilt. It is harder in the middle of a storm than before one arrives. But it is never too late to ask: what am I standing on? And is it solid enough to hold?

Prayer: Gracious God, we confess that we sometimes build our identity on things that cannot last — careers, roles, relationships that change. When those things shift, meet us there. Be the rock beneath us that does not move. Amen.

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