A 20th Century Monument

"Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I've come."

We have a loving and jealous God, a being that has cared for us since before we existed, one who paves our lives for us with careful and loving hands. It is beyond our understanding. Thousands of years ago, he gave a law to his people that they should have no other gods before him. No carved images of anything created that they would bow to or serve. 

As time carried on after these commands, we see the story of Samuel, one of Israel's first prophets raised up to lead God's people. We see them ignoring God and trying to fight their battles without him, and failing. Samuel steps in as a leader and having God be at the forefront of their battle, they defeat their enemy, not to see them return for as long as Samuel lived. After this battle, he set up a stone to remember this day. He called the stone "Ebenezer", saying "Till now the Lord has helped us."

I can't help but read this and see how God's law about carved images makes sense. It is not that he doesn't want us to look at created things at all, nor that he doesn't want us to enjoy created things. He just doesn't want us to think that created things have any sort of strength on their own. He knows that the only true source of power is himself, and if we try and serve created things, we will be failed. We will lose our battles. Samuel setting up that stone was solely to point God's people to God, to remember how he is with them and how he has led them and saved them. 

If we are careful to think about it, there are pivotal moments in our life where we have seen the Lord do work. Moments where in a second something about our Creator is revealed to us, and shines upon our life, causing us to revel in him, and he changes our hearts to become more like him. Would we not do well to raise up our own Ebenezers? To make our own monuments, not things to worship, but things we can look at and be reminded with every look that God has always been with us, and watching over us? 

To me, my Datsun pickup has been an Ebenezer. Not really by my choice at first, but as more and more things have happened in my life, I have seen how God has used happenings with my truck as teaching moments for me. Nowadays, I drive an hour back and forth to a city an hour away, all the while seeing cars and trucks (years newer than mine), sitting broken down on the side of the freeway with their blinkers on. I always ask, "How is that not me?" And I am reminded again of God's grace. He loves to use weak vessels to show his strength. As I grip the steering wheel of my 1972, he reminds of the same. I myself am one of those weak vessels. "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

You don't have to do anything extraordinary. You don't have to carve something in stone. (Well, you could if you wanted to.) But think through what God has done in your life, and surely you will find things that God has used to show you His great power and love, and the grace he has shown to let those things fall upon you. Look for Ebenezers, raise them up, remember the Lord and worship him, because it is He alone that can save. 

-A