[Wednesday's Devotional] - Rolling Stones

Rolling Stones

Yesterday we read how the Lord told Joshua to collect 12 stones for a memorial (to be built at Gilgal) and Joshua obeyed…

So Joshua called out the twelve men whom he selected from the People of Israel, one man from each tribe. Joshua directed them, “Cross to the middle of the Jordan and take your place in front of the Chest of God, your God. Each of you heft a stone to your shoulder, a stone for each of the tribes of the People of Israel, so you’ll have something later to mark the occasion. When your children ask you, ‘What are these stones to you?’ you’ll say, ‘The flow of the Jordan was stopped in front of the Chest of the Covenant of God as it crossed the Jordan—stopped in its tracks. These stones are a permanent memorial for the People of Israel.” Joshua 4:4 –7 [The Message]

Israel was now on the other side of the Jordan - in the Promised Land.  But what is life in the Promised Land like?  Was it one glorious vacation time after another?  No; for Israel it was a place of battle, but most of all, it was a place of trust - they knew they had to trust God with every thing they had, because the challenges only got bigger in the Promised Land - but so did the blessings.

Most of us would have wanted to rush on and take care of Jericho - why not take advantage of the time when they are all afraid of you?  But God is never in a hurry; and He knows that beyond us ‘doing’ something, we must ‘be’ something for Him - so He takes time out to conquer Israel spiritually before they can conquer Jericho physically under His guidance.

We sometimes forget the past great works of God thinking that the best days of our Christian experiences are behind us, however if we remember them as a point of faith we can trust God for greater works in the future, and the future of our children, because we have seen and experienced the faithfulness of God.

In the same way that the Israelites gathered stones from the Jordan for their spiritual marker, my husband and I ‘ate pie’ on our special ‘courting days’ bench on the banks of the Thames..… and I was going to need to cling on to that place of promise in the weeks to come.

Take time today from your ‘doing’ to just ‘be’ and let the Lord remind you of that place of victory amidst the troubled waters.  

Dawn Milward