So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, 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, to serve as a sign among you. 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….

On the tenth day of the first month the people went up from the Jordan and camped at Gilgal on the eastern border of Jericho. And Joshua set up at Gilgal the twelve stones they had taken out of the Jordan. He said to the Israelites, “In the future when your descendants ask their parents, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The Lord your God did to the Jordan what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over. He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful and so that you might always fear the Lord your God.”
– Joshua 4:4-7, 19-24

 

Since becoming an adult I’ve been consistently surprised at how quickly holidays come around. One moment it’s summer and then I wake up and it’s Christmas Eve. The speed at which we move through our days seems to be increasing as I get older, and that’s a problem. When you wake up on Christmas morning surprised that it’s already the end of the year it leaves little space for truly enjoying the holiday.

A key part of spiritual growth is gratitude, and gratitude requires remembering. Remembering requires time and space to delve into the past, something that we rarely give ourselves. God insisted that the Israelites leave time and space for remembering through festivals and days of significance. We would do well to set aside time to mark out moments in our memory.

Marking Memory

What things do you remember most from your childhood? Probably the things that you did or rehearsed regularly; a story your parents told frequently or a trip you regularly took at a specific time of the year.

Most of my own childhood memories revolve around things like our family’s fall trips to the North Shore, our Advent calendar tradition, and numerous other traditions that we did frequently. These traditions become markers in our memories – signals that remind us of significance. Ff we do that kind of memorial-building for earthly family events how much more should we do so with moments where God has worked in our lives?

Making memorial

The old testament is rife with the practice of making memorials, physical monuments, to mark moments of significance. When Jacob has his dream of angels ascending and descending from heaven he builds an altar in the location. Abraham digs a well at Mamre to mark the place. In the text quoted above Joshua commands Israel to mark their miraculous crossing of the Jordan with a massive pile of stones as a physical reminder of the event. We should be equally intentional about making memorial for the God moments in our lives.

Odds are you won’t be making piles of rocks like the Israelite patriarchs were fans of doing (though it’s not a bad idea), but we can easily build into our lives rhythms of rest and practices of making memorials that give us space to honor and remember things that should be honored and remembered. Two weeks ago marked one year from the miscarriage of our second child, and Kelly and I set aside time to talk, pray, and remember the pain and God’s goodness in the midst of that experience.

Mark your Christmas season this year by actually engaging with the practices of Advent, fasting or reading a Advent devotional with your family or significant other. Buy or make an object that has significance and place it somewhere that you will see it often to mark what God has done. On my desk in front of me there’s a rock covered in writing from a powerful retreat I participated in a few weeks ago.

What memorial do you need to make this week? What thing of significance has God done in your life in the last year? How can you make a tangible reminder for yourself of that thing? Let it be something that others might ask you about, so you can respond as Joshua did:

“In the future when your descendants ask their parents, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them, ‘Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ For the Lord your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The Lord your God did to the Jordan what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over. He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the Lord is powerful and so that you might always fear the Lord your God.”