God Can: Grass, Rocks & Open Wounds

“Sorry to say, your wound won’t close on its own. Getting skin to grow over a tendon is like getting grass to grow on a rock.”

Those words from my wound care doctor, after he’d prodded and probed the dime-sized wound over my twice-repaired Achilles with his swap.

It wasn’t what I’d hoped to hear.

But I love a vivid metaphor and “grass on a rock” is that.

Grass on a Rock & a Table in the Wilderness

So I latched onto it as I catapulted toward surgery. I used “grass on a rock” to explain to friends why 10 weeks post-op, I was still dressing an open wound.

Because grass won’t grow and wounds won’t close.

Fast forward four weeks, to yesterday morning. I’d read that blessed end of Ezekiel 36, how God would remove the heart of stone and replace it with a heart of flesh. I’d journaled and prayed.

Maybe that New Covenant “flesh” for “stone” did it. Whatever the cause, I had just asked God to heal my stitched and splinted heel, when, Psalm 78:19 burst into mind.

Psalm 78 traces God’s faithful care of his people despite their grumbling and distrust of him. Verse 19 details a specific sin during the manna-and-quail years,

“They spoke against God, saying,

‘Can God spread a table in the wilderness?’”

Well, actually.

He can.

God can spread a table in the wilderness. He can make grass grow on a rock. He is able to close our wounds and heal our hearts. In fact, “he is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20).

3 Truths to Welcome God’s “No”

A younger friend called me recently to ask for advice. She’s eager for a certain relationship to blossom. But the young man she is interested in doesn’t seem equally interested in her.

“Is it okay,” she wondered, “to ask God to change his heart?”

We talked around that a while. But then, at the end of our conversation, I shared three truths about God that help me to submit to God’s “no” or “not yet” when I pray:

1. God is able. (He can.)

2. God is good. (He loves me.)

3. If God doesn’t say “yes,” it’s not best.

In her case, it means that God is able to change the young man’s heart toward her, but if not, the relationship is not God‘s best.

In my case, it means God can heal my heel. He is able to make the skin over my low-blood-flow “rock” of an Achilles tendon grow together.

Grass on the Rock

In the weeks leading up to my third surgery, a good friend faithfully texted this,

“Praying grass will grow on the rock.”

I wasn’t convinced it would, but I knew God could.

Today I have my 15-day, post-op appointment. Some friends are calling it “the great unveiling.” We’ll get our first look under the bandage and splint since the surgery to remove the tendon sutures and heel anchors and cleanse any lingering infection.

In a few hours we’ll see if the rock has sprouted and the wound has closed.

The Grass and the Rock

But now it’s time to explain the photo. I snapped it one hour after I prayed, one hour after Psalm 78:19—“Can God spread a table in the wilderness?”—suddenly came to mind.

I had just taken a card to the mailbox. I couldn’t resist pulling a few weeds in front of our house on the way back, so I laid my crutches down and pulled handfuls up. But then I saw this little tuft.

When I yanked the plant, up came the rock. Thinking the plant was hanging by its roots from the rock, I shook it and shook it.

But it never dislodged. The clovery grass never came loose.

Because that grass was growing on the rock.

Did you catch that? Grass grew on a rock!

Is Anything Too Hard for Omnipotence?

I shouldn’t have been surprised.

Because the very next verse after, “Can God spread a table in the wilderness?“ is verse 20.

It reads,

“He struck the rock so that water gushed out and streams overflowed.

Can he also give bread or provide meat for his people?”

Do you remember the manna like frost and the bushels of quail?

Bible commentator Matthew Henry wrote,

“Which is easier, to furnish a table in the wilderness, which a rich man can do, or to fetch water out of a rock, which the greatest potentate on the earth cannot do?… Is anything too hard for Omnipotence? Nothing is impossible with him. Be it ever so great a thing that we ask, we can say, ‘Lord, if you will, you can.’”

Nothing is too hard for Omnipotence. God made a rock overflow. He makes grass grow where he wills.

Not “Can God?” but “God Can.“

Don’t place words wrongly, F. B. Meyer wrote, “Never say again, ‘Can God?’ but ‘God can.’”

God can spread a table in the wilderness. He did. And he changes hearts. He softens stony hearts and implants new hearts (Ezekiel 36:26). He heals broken hearts and, for the record, “he binds up all their wounds” (Psalm 147:3).

God is able, and God is good. He spread a table in the wilderness, he made water flow from a rock, and—I saw it with my own eyes—he made grass grow from a rock.

And all this means that if God doesn’t do what you ask him to do, he has something better for you.