9/25/2023 0 Comments Ebenezer stone of remembrance![]() ![]() Weathering had left pockmarks on their once smooth sides. When I collected these two broken bricks, their original red color had faded to a dark reddish-brown. Leading from the road to the front porch steps was a brick walkway. The house had been constructed by my great-grandfather in 1895 and was rather grand for its day. The second addition to the collection were two broken bricks from the front walk of my grandfather’s home. This first remembrance stone would be the beginning of a collection of stones from places that held significance to me and where God moved in my life. It became a treasured reminder to me of God’s grace to convict me of sin and to deepen my obedience to His word. One night, as I was reading scripture and praying, I noticed the forsaken remnants of the previous day’s work and decided to take one piece to be a reminder of how the Lord had been so gracious in those days and at that spot to draw me to Himself. The circular coring blade that cut through the concrete produced smooth-sided cement cylinders that the workmen left on the floor when they finished. The payphone closet was adjacent to the place at the end of the hallway, where I would often go late at night to read scripture and pray. ![]() The new phone system was rendering the payphones on each floor obsolete, so their closets made convenient spaces through which to run the new wiring. To provide access to each floor for the needed wiring, holes were drilled through the concrete floors. During my sophomore year of college, the building was being wired for a new campus phone system and computer network. The smooth sides reveal the rock and rebar that were once part of the first floor of Roberts Hall, a men’s dormitory on the Rome, GA campus of Shorter University. The sides are smooth from the blade that cut it. A day that can and will also bear witness to God’s faithfulness.The first of the collection is the large cement cylinder. As a reminder that today, too, is a full day of opportunities and blessings. There’s a hymn I love (which I often hum but never sing because I always singularly fail to remember the lyrics) called ‘Come thou fount of every blessing’, and one of the verses has these lines:įiller days are days to raise my Ebenezer. He is for all days, and for all of time, and his goodness and faithfulness are things to rejoice in always. But God isn’t just for the exciting days or for the hard days, but also for my ‘filler days’. Sandwiched between the last thing I was excited about and the next thing that I am waiting for. Days like this, when nothing of particular note is happening, I tend to view as a ‘filler days’. To set up an Ebenezer is to set up a tangible way to see again God’s faithfulness.ĭoing this is important, especially for days like today which, for me at least, is a day that is neither here nor there. Some of my blog posts have become places for me to come back to in times of need and trouble, so that I too can ‘walk by’ and be reminded of the work of the Lord. They are testimonies of how God has provided for me and shown his tremendous love. This is partly why I have a journal, and partly why I write on this blog – I am creating metaphorical stones of remembrance. I forget the times I have seen God’s faithfulness in my life easily, and need reminding again of God’s grace. I know all too well that my memory is short. As people walk by the stone, they are to be reminded of the work of the Lord. The stone he sets up is a visual reminder that God was (and is) their ultimate helper: for Ebenezer means ‘the stone of help’. He is calling attention to the fact that it was God who led the people out of captivity and to victory over their enemies. The verse above, 1 Samuel 7:12, is Samuel building a memorial to this work of the Lord. Apparently, they do as instructed, and God confuses the Philistines such that the Israelites are then able to push the Philistines out of their land. Samuel instructs them to get rid of their idols and rally together to fight the Philistines. Change arrives when the people come to Samuel, seeking the Lord’s guidance for the first time in years. ![]() The history behind this moment is some twenty years of the people of Israel living without God, in which time the Philistines have conquered and ruled over them. He named it Ebenezer, saying, ‘Thus far has the Lord helped us.’’ ‘Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. ![]() This marking out is something that was also done by Samuel, in the Bible: There was a pile of stones marking out the very top of the hill that I walked up on Saturday. ![]()
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