by Ramesh Richard

My family and I recently experience a colossal hole in the earth “deep in the heart of Texas.” Looming beneath us was a magnificent cave just discovered in 1963 during the construction of a major highway. The Inner Space Caverns boast extraordinary cave drapery. Dramatic formations mesmerize you. Only the imagination limits the interpretive understanding of this spectacular cavern art.

Our guide told us how to remember the names of formations. “Stalactites” hang tight from the cavern’s roof. “Stalagmites” rise from the floor and one day might meet the stalactites above. “Soda straws” aplenty hung from the ceiling. Starter stalagmites looked like stumps of prematurely cut trees. When stalactite and stalagmite eventually meet, they form bold and beautiful formations called “columns” connecting ceiling to floor.

As the tourist in me became fascinated by an awesome underground theater, the teacher in me searched the breath-taking sight for illustrative benefit. How can we build sturdy columns inside the caverns of our hearts to maintain a vital spiritual life…to make our lives fuller…more navigable…even visitor friendly?

Building Sturdy Columns

Just as columns in caverns form by the gradual growth of stalactites and stalagmites toward each other, columns in our hearts are built by heavenly realities making their way down to meet earthly realities making their way up. For stalactites and stalagmites must grow together toward each other to form the columns.

As divine reality and human reality meet, one’s inner space is filled with the transforming beauty, power, and stability of sturdy internal columns.

Cavern column-building demands at least three favorable conditions. First, a single water source is needed to blend the “hang tights” from the roof with just mights” from the floor. I submit that the single common source to make the meeting happen spiritually in your heart is God’s Word.

God’s truth acts as the sole creative element of fundamental reality. From Genesis 1 on, God’s Word singularly causes the being and becoming of all reality. Later on in the Bible (John 1), we find that this creative Word is Jesus Himself, by whom all realities were made (Colossians 1). God, God’s Word, God’s Son, God’s truth—these are not easily divided—created the physical realities of an underground fantasia. Could you see them as the source of your internal beauty, heart power, and spiritual stability as well?

Jesus creates both the truths of heaven and the realities of your earthly existence. He also creates specially textured, well-lit walkways for future appreciation of His inner work in your life.

Secondly, this single creative column-building source also function as the connecting force in a downward percolation of water supplied from rain. The science of speleology explores and describes cave systems, studies rates of formation of stalactites and stalagmites, pursues geological classification, and especially seeks to understand the influence of water conditions. Hydrological influence is the critical creative factor in building columns inside caverns.

So it is with “heart speleology.” As you excavate, explore, and explain your inner caverns, you build upon biblical premises. You are a unity, a (w)hole, yet many people prefer to mix God’s truths with their own preferences. Even though the first column in our hearts—salvation—has been built by God (not by our own self-saving strategies), we must pursue an ongoing connection within our hearts between heaven and earth.

While God’s truth and your existence are growing toward each other, they are still quite a distance apart. Severely stunted, we see grand stalactite patterns hanging from the ceiling of our hearts. And we stumble over stalagmites growing from the floor. We must now experience the downward percolation of the water of the Word (see the “word as water” metaphor in Ephesians 5:26) supplied by divine rain on our lives. The constant dripping of God’s truth will eventually transform you by connecting the floor and ceiling of your heart with beautiful, powerful, stable columns.

And finally, the single water source not only connects cave formations into columns, it assures the continuation of the conditions essential to a “living” cavern. A living, growing cavern relies on slow, persistent water activity. Dead caverns, though beautiful, only display past vibrancy. But a live, growing cavern needs the continuing presence of water.

Similarly, we are not to seal ourselves off from the constant drip…drip…drip of God’s truth…truth…truth. Sin blocks already tight passageways, when there needs to be enough room for the slow but steady deposit of truth. It is our responsibility in column building to make space for God’s truth by stifling sin in our lives. God bemoans our evil, independent hardness of heart in another water metaphor:

For My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:13)

Not every stalactite features a complementary stalagmite. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “Only when the pairing happens can there be continual elongation of one or both that may result in a junction and the formation of a column.” God’s truth is good and comprehensive for all of life’s situations. The problem is that we do not always bring that truth to bear on those situations. You must pair spiritual truth with personal reality if the condition for life and growth are to flourish within the cavern of your heart.

Truths for Daily Transformation

Now let me move from amateur spelunking to some creative, connecting, and continuing truths to assist you in building the beautiful, sturdy inner columns you need for a vital spiritual life. Like the incremental growth of cavern columns, we cannot receive all of God’s truth at once. Just let the following seven principles slowly, gently, steadily fall upon your heart, as you apply God’s comprehensive stalactic realities to your growing stalagmitic deposits:

  1. God thinks large purpose, operates long range, and emphasizes inner quality. His priority is His glory and His kingdom program. God is not interested in glorifying me or accomplishing my private agenda.
  2. God does not need us or anything we are, own, or possess. “The only reason God has chosen to need us is because we need to be needed.” (C.S. Lewis) I work with God, but God works without met.
  3. God makes the way as we obey, opens the door as we enter, furnishes the supplies as we have need. Through God created the supply before our needs arise, He is pleased with faith—the conviction of things hoped for and not yet seen.
  4. God writes every person’s story. The master story weaver (non-fiction, of course), God brings each narrative to a glorious resolution in the final chapter.
  5. God does not experience unforeseen circumstances, nor does God (by definition) commit human errors. Accidents, surprises, and delays are not in God’s experience or vocabulary. God specializes in brinkmanship.
  6. God is for me and with me. Forever. God is only against me when I am haughty, for He naturally resists the proud. As soon as I surrender to God, His favor toward me returns. Immediately.
  7. God leads clearly, simply, and with certainly. God does not confuse His children. When guidance takes longer than expected, our response is to wait for God’s simple, sure direction.

While the tourist in me took pictures in the caverns, the teacher in me noted principles for life. The teacher in me also calls for some homework from you, unless you are on vacation! Here is your assignment:

  • Find a biblical text or illustration for each of these seven points. (30%)
  • Begin your internal column-building—pair God’s truth with your life by writing out a complementary application for each point. (30%)
  • Inscribe these biblical texts and applications in your cranium, guts, and palms. (40%)
  • Send your homework to me. I would enjoy hearing from you. (extra credit)

Are you a living, growing cavern? Are you building beautiful, sturdy inner columns by applying God’s creative, connecting, and continuing truths in your life each day?