That line has always stopped me. It feels both beautiful and haunting at the same time. Beautiful, because it tells us that praise is inevitable—the whole world is built to respond to the glory of God. Haunting, because if people won’t testify, then the inanimate, the lifeless, even rocks will take our place.
Joshua 24:27 – “Behold, this stone shall be a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of the Lord that he spoke to us.”
And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I realize the Bible has been whispering this theme all along. Joshua once set up a stone as a covenant witness and told Israel, “This stone has heard all the words of the Lord.”
Habakkuk 2:11 – “For the stone will cry out from the wall, and the beam from the woodwork respond.”
Habakkuk went even further, saying that a stone in the wall would cry out against injustice and the beam of the wood would answer it. That’s where my mind drifts to Edgar Allan Poe’s dark little tales—The Tell-Tale Heart or The Black Cat—stories where guilt gets nailed behind a wall, boarded up, and sealed off. Yet somehow the silence can’t hold. The floorboards throb, the plaster groans, and the very structure testifies against the man who thinks he has covered everything. Poe gives us fiction, but Habakkuk gives us truth: the stones will not stay silent.
But the Bible doesn’t just use this image in judgment. The Psalms and Isaiah turn it into music. The seas roar, the rivers clap their hands, the trees sway and sing, the mountains burst into joy. Creation itself is a choir, rehearsing day after day. It’s like every sunrise is a solo and every wave is an ovation. The world is alive with praise, even when we walk by deaf to the sound.
Isaiah 55:12 – “The mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.”
Psalm 19:1 – “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.”
Psalm 98:7–8 – “Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who dwell in it! Let the rivers clap their hands; let the hills sing for joy together.”
So when Jesus says the stones would cry out, He’s not spinning poetry. He’s stating reality. If His disciples hushed their mouths, if the whole city went silent, the ground itself would split open in song. That’s how undeniable He is. That’s how true His kingship is.
And it leaves me with a question: am I letting the world do my praising for me? Do I walk through life too distracted, too self-absorbed, too busy to join in the chorus? Too fearful? Because truth has a way of finding a voice—through judgment, through joy, through waves, through stones. The only question is whether I will join in, or whether I’ll leave it to the rocks.
As for me, I don’t want to be out-sung by the stones.
This week, Isaiah 40:9–11 has been pressing on my heart. “Go on up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news; lift up your voice with strength… say to the cities of Judah, ‘Behold your God!’” That passage holds together both courage and tenderness—the mighty arm of God in verse 10 and the shepherd’s heart in verse 11.
In the wake of the shocking assassination of Charlie Kirk, I’ve felt the weight of that tension. It is so tempting to either lash out in anger or to retreat into silence. But God calls us to something better: to lift up our voices without fear, to speak truth with strength, and to do it with the gentle tone of a shepherd.
I’ve been challenged to speak up more—not to be combative, not to join the noise, but to testify with civility and grace, even toward those who disagree with me. The rocks shouldn’t have to do my talking. My prayer is that I can lift my voice clearly, kindly, and consistently, so that in my own small way I’m pointing people to the Shepherd who carries lambs close to His heart.
Sadly, enemies may throw stones, we should not- we need to fear not and speak up.
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