Jar of Dry Rocks and Sand

Jar of rocks

There’s a well-known story about putting rocks, pebbles and sand into a jar representing our lives and our priorities. The story goes: A professor once stood up before his class with a large empty jar. He filled the jar to the top with large rocks and asked his students if the jar was full.

The students said “yes, the jar was full.”

He then added small pebbles to the jar, and gave the jar a bit of a shake so the pebbles could disperse themselves among the larger rocks. Then he asked again, “Is the jar full now?” The students agreed that the jar was still full.

The professor then poured sand into the jar to fill up any remaining empty space. The students then agreed that the jar was still completely full.

He explained the larger rocks represent the big important things in our lives. If there was no pebbles and sand in your life, the jar would still be pretty full. The pebbles represent smaller things in our lives that we could live without but they make life fun and interesting. They are not critical though to live a good life. The sand represents the “filler” things in your life. They don’t mean a whole lot but they waste time or fill time.

His conclusion was that if you start with putting sand into the jar, you will not have room for rocks or pebbles after you put in the sand. This holds true with the things you let into your life. If you spend all of your time on the small and insignificant things, you will run out of room for the things that are actually more important. You must put them in the jar in order of priority to have a full life. His story is about priorities.

I’d like to take the story a step further. The big rocks do go in first and can represent things which are important and necessary-being born, accepting Christ as Savior, marriage, family, a home, a job…. Pebbles could represent those things in life that make life enjoyable but are not necessary – vacations, job promotions, fancy clothes… The sand is the filler. The sand is everything else that fills in our lives. It’s the emotions and feelings that surround our lives. It’s the small stresses of daily life. It makes our life full. A jar of rocks and sand would be pretty full but dry and “thirsty”.

What if we were to pour water into the jar on top of the rocks? Water is essential to life. Water would flow down through EVERYTHING. When the water reaches the sand, the water would seem to disappear into the sand. It doesn't actually disappear—it drains into the tiny pores between the grains. Once all these pores are filled with water, the sand is saturated. Sometimes it causes rocks or pebbles to move a little settling them into a better place. The saturation holds it all together. It is no longer dry and thirsty.

How about a pouring of the Living Water into the jar?? If God were to pour His living water (God) into our lives, then our jar (life) would have “a rainfall in rich abundance” to quench the dry and thirsty. Our jar would become full with a fresh outpouring from Him over us. We would have Him in every tiny little pore of our lives. How wonderful to have our lives be fully covered in Him and fully saturated by Him!

“For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon your offspring, and my blessing upon your descendants.” Isaiah 44:3