The Anchor Point

In 2011, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake rattled the East Coast, cracking the Washington Monument from top to foundation. Engineers discovered something remarkable during the three-year restoration: the original builders in the 1880s had sunk the foundation thirty-seven feet into bedrock. The visible structure stands 555 feet tall, but its hidden anchor had held firm through more than a century of storms, temperature swings, and now a seismic event that sent two million people scrambling into the streets.

Workers reinforced the cracks, but they did not rebuild the foundation. They did not need to. It had never shifted.

The psalmist in Psalm 71 is aging. His enemies circle. His strength is fading. Yet he does not pray like a man in freefall. He prays like someone whose feet are planted on something ancient and immovable. "You have been my hope, Sovereign Lord, my confidence since my youth. From birth I have relied on You."

This is what a lifetime of trust produces — not a faith untouched by cracks, but a faith whose foundation goes deeper than any fracture can reach. The psalmist had been leaning on the Almighty since before he could remember, sustained from his mother's womb, held by hands he did not choose but that chose him.

When the shaking comes — and it always does — the question is never whether the surface will crack. It is whether the foundation holds. The God who carried you from birth is the same Rock beneath your feet today.