“Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, from right where the priests are standing, and carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight.” (Joshua 4:2,3)
Recording important events, historic occasions or legal transactions required significantly more effort in Joshua’s day than it does now. Agreements were chiseled in stone and monuments were erected at historic sites. Now documents and photos can be digitized and sent across the world almost instantly. For the occasion of crossing the Jordan, Joshua wanted to make sure the people remembered. Still ringing in his ears was the warning of Moses who had led the people out of Egypt and for forty plus years in the desert wilderness. Moses had warned them to not forget the events that had brought them there. He knew their nature and ours as well. Forgetting comes so easily to us. So Joshua told them to pick one person from each of the twelve tribes. Each one was to pick up a rock from the middle of the Jordan and carry it with them to the encampment they would settle in for the night. There they stacked the stones to fashion a historic marker of the day’s events. “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 4:6b, 7 NIV)
Thanksgiving is about remembering. It is about visiting the places in your heart where you have piled up stones to mark the important events, the places in your life’s journey were you were up against it and God showed up. It is about those places where you knew you were blessed and you were sure you could never forget the feelings, the moment, the people, the place. But we can. We do. We forget our blessings and the One who provided them just as easily as they did in Moses’ day. His warning to them is a pertinent to us now as it was to them then. “Be careful!” “Don’t forget!” But they did. And I do. And so have you. So before this Thanksgiving passes, I’m taking some time to re-visit some stones that I have piled up through the years and remember their meaning.
There is the beautiful young woman on her father’s arm at the end of the aisle at that church in Tampa, Florida. Here are three little girls wrapped in pink and white baby blankets. And there is the hospital waiting room where we heard “it isn’t cancer, she’ll be ok” when she was twelve. Those stones over there are for three weddings, two grandchildren and two more on the way. And these are for the house on Fox Ct in Titusville, FL and the tiny apartment on Sutherland in Knoxville, TN so that I won't forget how far I have come. Places. Stones. Blessings. There are these and so many more.
This Thanksgiving, remember those places, those stone piles in your own life. Pay them another visit. And give thanks!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Jerald
