Vacation Edition: Stones

Joshua 4:1-7
New International Version 1984 (NIV1984)
Joshua 4


 1 When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the LORD said to Joshua, 2 “Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, 3 and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan from right where the priests stood and to carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight.”


 4 So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, 5 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, 6 to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ 7 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.”     
 
   When we had first moved to Minnesota in 1995 our stated goal was to take a vacation every two years back home to Maine. That is a tradition we kept to until the last four or five years as both sets of our parents continue to age anddeal with various health issues. Now we come home every summer and one week of the winter Patty heads to her parents and I to mine.
     Every year we go home we always think it is the last year the kids will come home with us. Yet this year was more of the same. Morgan, recent graduate from college, recently licensed as a minister with the Assemblies of God, and recently engaged, wanted to bring her fiancee, Levi, home to meet the family and to see the sights.  Jordan, entering his final year of college, brought his girlfriend, Abby, home for the same reason. (Let me say before going further my children have chosen well).
     There is something about going back home and every year we hit the same places: the beach, the mountain, Queechee Gorge, the golf courses, Martell's Ice Cream, Two Lights and on and on. We never get bored when coming home.
    This year we all attended service at Emmanuel Assembly of God in Portland. Emmanuel Assembly holds a special place in my heart for it is there that God dealt with my me and persuaded me to enter the ministry full-time. It is also there that God gave Patty and I Pastor Ken and Beth Wilcox who invested in us, helped us grow in our faith and prepared us for what lie ahead in ministry. My "pastor template" is fashioned after the care, compassion and sense of duty Pastor Wilcox displayed in front of me. It is no mistake that I still call him Pastor because, in many ways, he still remains so.
    We head back to Emmanuel Assembly every year not just to visit old friends. In all honesty, not many of the people we fellowshiped with from 1990-1995 are still there. Many have passed away, many have moved on to other churches. But I can go to Emmanuel Assembly of God and go to the spot at the altar I had knelt one Sunday night and I finally gave in to God's call on my life.
    The passage from Joshua is important because God instructed Joshua to put up a reminder of God's goodness and faithfulness and provision in getting to the Promised Land. This pile of stones was not to be placed there for that generation but for the future generations who would see the stones and ask "What is that?" And the response would be the wonderful story of God leading them out of Egypt.
     All of us have stones in our life that we can take our children, our grandchildren, our friends to see. It may be a picture, it may be a place, it may be a building but it will be a reminder of when God was faithful to us and a reminder that he will be faithful again. It will also instill in the future generation the truth that  if God spoke to Dad, provided for Dad, healed Dad then God will be there to do the same for them.
    This is why it was important to bring Levi and Abby to Emmanuel Assembly, for it is there it all started. If Emmanuel Assembly never happened, we would never have moved to Minnesota and Morgan would have never met Levi and Jordan never would have met Abby.
     Thank God for the stones that bring back not just the memory of his faithfulness but the hope of who He still is.