Of Roman Cement

About a week ago, on a drive to work, I found myself remembering a documentary I’d watched once that highlighted the wonder of Ancient Roman cement. It might sound like a boring topic, but if you’ve ever experienced Roman historical sites, you know that many of those structures remain—sometimes intact—over two thousand years after they were constructed. In fact, some of the aqueducts and seawalls built by the Romans are still in use today. The secret, the documentary said, was that they used volcanic ash which, when combined with other ingredients, actually caused the cement to grow stronger year by year. So that with each passing decade, the architecture stood unmoved (even when it was under immense pressure, such as under water, in extreme temperatures, and in areas of seismic activity). It’s remarkable, to say the least.

Fast forward a week or so. As I was journaling one afternoon, I asked God to give my children faith “like Roman cement.” What I meant was that I wanted their faith to grow stronger with each passing year. To be immovable despite the difficulties they would face.

God reminded me, I think, of the reason Roman cement had those qualities: namely, the presence of volcanic ash. Ash that had been produced under tremendous pressure and deadly heat. That had erupted and broken and poured out until it cooled into something different altogether. In other words, the reason Roman cement endured was because of that agonizing process.

Allow me to back up. Over the past year, especially, my family has faced some incredibly painful and difficult circumstances. We have been stretched and broken and stretched again. There’ve been moments when I wondered whether we would—literally and figuratively—all survive. It’s been hard. It’s shaken some of us to our core and brought us to the brink of walking away from God altogether.

It’s been our own moment of fire and explosion and ash.

We’re living in the cooling period just now. The flow of lava has slowed and there haven’t been explosions overhead in a little while. Slowly, surely, God has been healing us and our relationships—with one another and with Him. He’s been drawing each of my children toward Himself in different ways. And He’s building something new.

As I sat with the imagery of the Roman cement, I was blown away by the parallels to the season we’ve just come through. I’d known, at some level, that these hard things would be used. That He would turn them around for good. But the thought that they could be the very components that make my family’s faith stronger year by year… That, only God could orchestrate.

By now I was headlong down a rabbit trail and wanting to learn more about Roman cement. So I took to the internet to learn and I stumbled on a new discovery, discussed by several major scientific publications last year. A group of researchers had been looking into just what made the ancient cement so enduring, aside from the presence of volcanic ash. Because modern scientists had tried to replicate the recipe with ash, and found it didn’t hold up quite like the old stuff did.

For years, scientists and archaeologists had been noticing small flecks of white in the cement compositions. They’d been chalked up to poor mixing, although that seemed unusual for a culture that was so precise and had developed such a refined technique for building with cement. So they set out to research the flecks. What they discovered was that they were composed of lime. If you’ve spent much time studying lime, you know that, in its “unslaked” form, it’s highly reactive to water. It creates a chemical reaction that generates extremely high temperatures and transforms the material into something altogether different and usable. What experts now believe is that, in addition to volcanic ash, the Romans used unslaked lime in their cement composition. Then they exposed the cement to water, which did a couple of things: it increased the temperature of the mixture, causing chemical reactions that created super strong bonds in the cement. The high temperatures also sped up the cure time, so that the structures became strong much more quickly. And lastly, they left little pockets of unslaked lime within the cement.

Over time, as water seeped in through cracks in the structure, those bits of lime, too, were exposed to water and underwent a chemical reaction. That reaction, if I understand it correctly, created a calcium material that essential sealed off the cracks. In other words, the cement was able to self-heal.

You may not geek out over ancient cement like I do, and this isn’t normally my type of rabbit hole. But it was impossible to miss the parallels to what my children have been going through in this season—what we’ve gone through in many seasons! Not only is the presence of volcanic ash—those explosive, painful experiences—part of what contributes to our strength over time, but the high-heat, super-reactive events that change us—those extreme experiences that bring us to our breaking point so that we come out the other side as different people—may be the very things that help us to heal in future hardship.

There are neuroscientific parallels to these ideas as well, but from a spiritual perspective, I can’t help but sit with the truth of this imagery. God promises us that all things work together for the good of those who love Him. Yet so many of our experiences are painful, life-altering, gut-wrenching events. How can those possibly be for our good?

And yet, they are. They are the very places where we’ve walked out to the limit with God and still found Him faithful. Where we’ve reached our “rock bottom” and discovered we weren’t alone. Where we’ve believed that all was over, yet found, instead, new life.

Faith that has endured hardship is like Roman cement. It grows stronger year by year, not in spite of the painful things, but because of them.

If you are walking through a difficult season—for yourself or for your loved ones—take heart. Don’t believe for a second that the pain you’re experiencing will be wasted. In fact, watch for the ways God incorporates it into the very fabric of who you are. And know that that kind of faith, the kind that surrenders itself to God’s process, will only grow more durable and immovable with each passing year.

Stronger, even, than Roman cement.