Sunday Story, July 16, 2017

Hauling Rocks

“I have built many altars in my home,” was a phrase often used by my mother-in-law during testimony services on Sunday and Wednesday night prayer meetings. She would often tell me of being distressed about something and going off to a certain place to pray. Each place had a significance and she was determined and faithful to altars and prayer.

Alters are mentioned often in the Bible. They were raised structures designed for sacrifice, but most importantly they were built as a monument to commemorate or remember an encounter with God. They symbolize communion with the LORD.

When God provided a dry path across the Jordan River and Joshua led the Hebrew children into the Land of Canaan, God said to send a member from each tribe back into the riverbed and retrieve a rock to build an alter. When this was done the river returned to its normal seasonal flow and on the banks twelve random stones became a place to return to and know God was faithful. He provided and protected. The same unchanging God, would remain so and to the future be as faithful as history reveals. (Joshua 4.)

When I was a teenager my parents purchased land on top of a mountain to build a home. It was a great adventure building a home of our own. However, the first order of business was to turn a wasteland of hard rock and little soil into an inhabitable lawn. Summer days, after school and several Saturdays we trekked to the house site. We threw boulders over the bluff and into the woods, we selected the choicest stones to be used in the exterior walls, and sometimes we just made flowerbeds, all in an effort to rid ourselves of these geological nuisances.

We didn’t live in that house for long. Dad was called to shepherd a new flock and eventually a ‘for sale’ sign added ‘sold.’ But I have returned to this address many times over the years. Looked at the trees, once so small, now giving shade. I’ve been drawn to the edge of the drive and looked off that bluff and remembered the rocks, and the dreams, and the silly times we had as adolescents turning labor into frolic. I look at the exterior walls and remember the pride my parents took in their accomplishment. And I remember in the home, we prayed, we cried, we laughed, we fought, and we prayed some more.

Recently my husband and I traveled with a friend to a place with a very similar story. Her family needed a place of respite, so her parents acquired a beautiful lake front property. Under her dad’s direction they hauled rocks. They turned their stoney slope into an Eden where the ivy from her wedding bouquet still flourishes. There are rock walls, waterfalls, pools, and flower beds. The rocks had to go somewhere so they became a thing of beauty, a source of joy.

The Israelites were under attack by the Philistines and Samuel prayed. The Israelites prevailed and Samuel took a stone, placed it between Mizpah and Shen and called it’s name Ebenezer. (I Samuel 7:12) Today a popular Hymn references this monument.

Here I raise mine Ebenezer, here by Thy great help I’ve come. (Robert Robinson)

Haul some rocks. Build some altars. Return to them and remember. Bring your family, and some friends. Tell them, sing praise, worship and stand in the anticipation of the days to come.

Love,

Gretchen