So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, and said to them, “Go over before the ark of the Lord your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever.”
Joshua 4:4-7
Several weeks ago, while attending church in Las Vegas, we heard a guy preach a sermon from this passage. He talked about God’s instructions to the Israelites of gathering stones as a memorial. He than spent some time correlating that to our lives and how we have STONES, or times, in our lives that God wants us to remember.
This passage is one that was familiar to us, but one we hadn’t thought about in a while. Kevin and I both left the service pondering the idea of STONES in our lives and God uses seasons and times to mark us and shape us forever.
That night at dinner, Kevin asked the girls their thoughts on the message we had heard that morning. His questions prompted a discussion among our family about all of the times in our lives that had become STONES for us…..times where we saw God’s faithfulness to us.
In the passage, one of the things that is the most striking to me is God’s instructions to the Israelites to share with their children all that He had done for them. As believers, I sometimes think we don’t follow through well on these instructions…….we forget to keep telling of the Lord’s faithfulness to us. We get busy with life and responsibilities, and we neglect to follow through on that important part of the instructions.
As we talked as a family, one of the things that we determined was that this season of our lives will be a stone….it will be a time where we look back and remember all of the ways that the Lord provided for us and went before us.
Maybe you can turn this into a dinner table conversation at your house too…..a moment where you share a story or recount a time that God’s faithfulness to you marked you for forever!
With grateful hearts,
Kevin and Casey
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