How hard are you willing to work for something? What goals do you have that you are prepared to lay aside every distraction for? What hopes and dreams do you refuse to let go of? Or have you let go of the ones that appear too difficult to reach?
These are questions only you can personally answer. But I hope to help you answer them with a lesson I learned on the 2024 Ophel dig in Israel. It’s a lesson that applies to all people from all walks of life. It’s a lesson of perseverance and persistence. It’s a lesson that takes time to learn and practice to believe in. Nevertheless, it rings true with every whack of the hammer on the stone. It’s the lesson of the stonecutter.
While in Jerusalem on the Ophel, my primary duty was to break walls, bust rocks, and move earth to the crane bucket, where we would dump the refuse and eliminate the piles and bags of dirt. My main job, therefore, was not to dig. It was to facilitate the convenience of digging for others. This was great! I loved it! I gained a reputation for this brutish work as I knocked down walls and smashed finely hewn stones (and some not-so-finely hewn) with a sledgehammer. Others noticed my success in breaking these large rocks into smaller chunks and joked that the stones would cry out when I came to the dig site. I was nicknamed “the quarry master,” “the rock whisperer,” and “the caterpillar”—like the excavator, not the insect (though I am a pretty small guy, to be fair).
I realized it wasn’t about physical strength as I broke through the stones. It was about positioning the rock for my swing, hitting it in the right place, and consistently doing so until it cracked in half or shattered to pieces. I found that some stones needed to be shifted slightly to be broken quickly. Still, I also found that in some cases, the only way to ensure rapid progress was to persevere with determination to break through the stone.
There was one stone; I couldn’t tell you how heavy it was, but it was about the size of the Phoenician stone capital in the Kingdom of David and Solomon Discovered exhibit. It took me almost an hour to crack that stone, but the challenge was just what I needed. I came to love smashing stones, not because it made me feel like a semi-truck (though, I reckon that was part of it), but more so because, in a small way, I could experience a personal victory every day over common, ordinary stones that made themselves out to be insurmountable foes on the dig site. All it took on my part was some determination—some stick-to-it-tive-ness.
I believe this lesson applies to anyone. You have goals. You have aspirations to achieve and obstacles to conquer every day. Some obstacles are small and straightforward to conquer. Others require long-term perseverance. Some obstacles require persistent effort over many days—sometimes months or years—to overcome! At times like this, we are faced with seemingly hopeless odds. We have all experienced the exasperation of working on a project in school or for work only to find that we have yet to make any real, visible progress. Like smashing the rocks on the dig site, it sometimes seemed like there was no way to crack the big boys! Some stones just seemed too hard to bust! But realize that feeling your trial is too big to break through presents us with an opportunity to grow in character.
Our work, projects, and lives are not just about brute force. Sometimes—most times—it’s about consistent, persevering, and concentrated effort on a single point. Effort which, over time, climaxes in the splitting of the toughest of rocks. It brings to mind the analogy of the stonecutter by Jacob A. Riis. He says this way, “When nothing seems to help, I go and look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow, it will split in two, and I know it was not that last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.”
How about you? Does it seem you can’t get a breakthrough in your projects, your assignments, your hobbies, your talents, or your personal growth and improvement in the character of God? There are countless moments in life where we are wailing away at boulders, trying to split them in two. And yet, many people quit when just a little more perseverance and stick-to-it-tive-ness would have turned apparent defeat into a smashing success! Listen to Mr. Armstrong’s words as they resound in your mind! “Yes,” he writes in The Seven Laws of Success, “nine in ten, at least once or twice in a lifetime, come to the place where they appear to be totally defeated! All is lost!—apparently, that is. They give up and quit, when just a little more determined hanging on, just a little more faith and perseverance—just a little more stick-to-it-iveness—would have turned apparent certain failure into glorious success.”
Does this describe you!? Are you tired of working without seeing results? I submit that you have not yet worked long enough and hard enough to earn the results!
Sometimes, we must have the vision to keep going, knowing that we are making an impact below the surface. And at some point, the rock will break! We must work until the enemy cracks—until the rock crumbles in pieces before our mighty swings and blows. It will not always happen in one, two, five, or even ten blows. It may take 50 to 100 hits on some massive stones to crack them in half, but keep swinging the hammer! Be consistent. Concentrate on a single spot and have faith that you’re progressing! Do not quit too soon! Don’t quit at all! Because, as I can firmly attest, the rock will crack on that one 101st blow. The stone will crumble, and the success will come.
Consider the stonecutter. Consider his labor. Learn to persevere unto victory and conquer life’s boulders.