Erecting Your Own Ebenezer: The Power of Remembrance and Gratitude

How do you keep life in perspective?

When we are successful, we claim credit. When life is tough, we feel abandoned.

There is a way to see what is true. It involves a stone.

1 Samuel opens with a nation in chaos. After generations of spiritual lethargy, faith and morality leeched out of God’s people. An inept priest offered bandages for a cancer.

Then, when it could get no worse, the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant, the focus of Israel’s faith in the covenant.

Into this scene came a young man, born to a godly woman, who followed the voice of God. His name was Samuel.

Samuel rallied the people, not as a general but as a prophet. He told them to pray and keep praying.

“They said to Samuel, “Do not stop crying out to the LORD our God for us, that he may rescue us from the hand of the Philistines.” (1 Samuel 7:8, NIV)

As the Philistines attacked, the Lord heard the prayers and threw the invading thugs into confusion. That day on that field, the moral bleeding stopped.

How to keep this memory alive? Samuel did it with a stone.

Stone remembrances were common.

When Israel crossed the Jordan, Joshua had erected a pillar of 12 stones in the middle of the dry river bed. When the river would ebb each year, the stones would peek out from the water, and they would remember. God brought us here and gave us his grace.

So Samuel does the same. 1 Samuel says:

“Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the LORD has helped us.” (1 Samuel 7:12, NIV)

The term “Ebenezer” (though it is the name of Scrooge) is the Hebrew term “stone of help.” It was there to remind Israel that God had helped them. More than that, it was there to mark a day and force them to face their future in the shadow of their past.

Do you need an Ebenezer?

I doubt we put a stone in the garden and name it, but we need some way of reminding us of the times that God guided us, helped us, and saved us.

A journal may do. Perhaps a day each year when you take stock of the great things God has done in your life.

It is easy to forget. Once the crisis is gone, the words, “With the Lord’s help, we will get through this” (one of my recent prayers).

Why is it important? Because God’s faithfulness is etched in the stones of time, where we can retrace our steps and see where God carried us, when God cared for us, and how God saved us.

We need to be able in times of trouble to say,  “Thus far the LORD has helped us.”

Without our Ebenezer, we become spiritual amnesiacs, forgetting the good in the moment.

Whether you want to erect a rock garden is up to you, but we all need our own Ebenezer.

What’s yours?