Stone of help

A few weeks ago, I took a rather spontaneous road trip down to Grand Junction with a couple of my roommates. Between Rudolph bandages, getting lost (twice) in our rental car named Esperanza, a Wal-Mart trip that resulted in four new pairs of shoes, tree climbing, and eating roast beef and gravy at the foot of the Colorado monument, we had our fair share of adventures that weekend. The two nights we spent in that little motel (which pleasantly surprised us) were a moment to just breathe—the last hurrah, the final break from school I would have before graduating in April. As I left behind my academic concerns, it seemed as if I were holding on to a bit of life before plunging back into the stresses and fears of daily living.

Careful google research and questioning the town’s natives had led us to select some hikes that we wanted to explore. We were particularly excited about the hike to the Colorado monument. 

As we began the ascent to that stunning rock formation, I was wrapped up in the beauty of nature. At one point, I lagged behind my friends, feeling the silence and the nearness of life and heaven. In the midst of this reflective moment, a tree growing on the side of the trail caught my eye. The bark was jagged and old, the branches twisted and jutting into the sky. But it was the roots that drew my attention. Underneath part of the root system was lodged a rock. Who knows how that rock originally wound up next to the young tree years ago, but as the tree matured, that root had grown over its new friend the rock. 

I stood in front of this tree and my mind immediately turned to one of my favorite Old Testament stories, next to which in my own scriptures I had drawn a picture of the very scene I was seeing here. In the book of Joshua, chapter 24 verse 15, Joshua speaks to the children of Israel, inviting them—in words that now grace many a Christian mantelpiece—to take a side on the battle between right and wrong. To these Hebrews who were now living in a gentile land and were descendants of the Jews who had been in captivity in Egypt, Joshua exhorts:

“And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the floor, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." 

As God’s chosen people, they needed to be different. They needed to serve the God who had led them out of captivity and who had preserved them in the wilderness. But they had forgotten that. They hadn’t always lived up to their covenants and privileges. They had at times forgotten the Lord and served other gods. The time had come for them to turn back to Him who gave them life. And Joshua invited them to make this recommitment. In response to the counsel and question of their inspired leader, the children of Israel replied, “God forbid that we should forsake the Lord, to serve other gods.” They recount some of the great things God has done for them and once again assert, “therefore will we also serve the Lord; for he is our God.” Joshua, desiring to make sure that his people truly intended to keep such a far-reaching promise, warned them of the consequences of making such a covenant and then deciding to forsake God and turn back to sin. After the people respond that they understand this but still desire to serve God, Joshua proclaims, “Ye are witnesses against yourselves that ye have chosen the Lord, to serve him.” After this, he records in “the book of the law of God” the covenant that the people made this day in Shechem, and then he “took a great stone, and set it up there under an oak, that was by the sanctuary of the Lord,” and said to the people “behold, this stone shall be a witness unto us; for it hath heard all the words of the Lord which he spake unto us: it shall be therefore a witness unto you, lest ye deny your God.” The rock became a symbol of their covenant; of their recommitment to serve their God. It’s kind of like the earliest CTR ring or picture of the temple hanging in the living room. This inanimate object was to remind them of who they are and what they had promised to do.

The first time I remember being struck by this story was in my seminary class as a teenager. The idea of a stone witness to a covenant seemed powerful somehow. While I did not understand all the implications of that story—nor do I at this point—I logged away the feelings that I had had; that sense of rededication to the Lord’s service.

As a missionary in Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, I had many of my own children of Israel moments as I came to learn what consecration meant. I recognized that I had made sacred covenants to my God, and I desired to be true to them. I wanted to be the best missionary and best servant of the Lord that I could be. I didn’t want to be serving other gods of selfishness or pride or distraction. I wanted the God of Israel to be my God. Rings are quite popular in Ukraine, and I bought a cheap stone ring, and wore it as a symbol of my commitment and covenants to God. It was my silent witness, my reminder that I had promised my God certain things. Obviously the stone was not the most important thing in the lives of these Israelites, just as my ring wasn’t the most important part of my mission. The important part was the actual desire, the covenants, the commitment to the Lord. And often physical symbols of these covenants help us. That’s why we hang pictures of the Savior on the walls of our homes. That’s why God gave us the temple garment. That’s why we wear CTR rings. These physical objects can serve as powerful reminders of who we are and what we promised.

This story of a symbolic stone reminds me of yet another Old Testament rock that means a lot to me. For years I have loved the beautiful hymn “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” and I have been intrigued by the statement, “Here I raise my Ebenezer.” Some study time spent in the Bible has helped me come to understand the meaning of this Ebenezer as a “stone of help.” But it has only been recently that a deeper shade of meaning has come to my understanding. The children of Israel set up this stone again as a physical reminder of God’s presence in their lives (1 Sam. 7:10-12). They wanted to commemorate the Lord’s help in a victory against their enemies. Yet that very spot where they erected this stone was the location on which the children of Israel had suffered two defeats by the Philistines previous to their most recent victory (1 Sam. 4:1 and 5:1). That reality brought the poignancy of this stone even more deeply into my heart. The Israelites were commemorating a spot where they had lost. Their ultimate victory did not come before they had suffered great defeats. They did not shy away from the memory of shame and defeat, but combined that with knowledge of a subsequent victory and praised the Lord. I would dare say that that spot of land was probably made even more precious to them because they had been beaten there. Their defeats made their victory sweeter and their faith stronger. And they wanted to remember all of it.

And I think the same goes for us. We face countless defeats in our lives. Maybe not always military or physical defeats, although those are very real. But often these defeats come in more subtle ways. A failed test. A lost job opportunity. A broken relationship. A relapse into negative behaviors. And as much as we hate these failures and want to forget them, we need these setbacks. There is no other way we can grow. And eventually, if we continue to move forward and to fight the battles that lie before us, relying on the God of heaven for our strength, we are going to have victories in the midst of our defeats.

I looked again at that inadvertent Ebenezer in Colorado, thoughts of my own experiences intermingling with images of Israelites and leading me to silently praise God. Amidst all of our failures, sins, and defeats, he truly is our constant Stone of help.