Raising Ebenezers
It’s a month for turkeys, cranberries, football, red cup day and making gift lists. But in our family, it’s also a month for raising Ebenezers.
There’s a lot of talk during November about gratitude and I’m here for all of it and if you’re looking for a way to carry gratitude beyond this month, I can think of nothing better than building an Ebenezer. What is an Ebenezer? In 1 Samuel 7, we learn that the prophet Samuel wanted to make sure that the Israelites marked their victory over the Philistines and remember how God saved them.
“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’” (v. 12).
In 2018, Gibson and I started a wall of “Ebenezers” around our small garden pond. Each of those stones mark an answer to prayers we have experienced thus far, much like Samuel did. Obvious answers to prayer were memorialized with a stone for the birth of each of our three daughters, the marriages to our two sons-in-law, and the birth of each grandchild. Other stones were placed to mark God’s healing. It was a fun time during our ceremony to let the grandchildren place their stones on the wall, and I’ve found them in the years since, going back to find their named stones. Thanksgiving is a time we look back at the year and say “Thus far the Lord has helped us” and add more Ebenezers to the wall.
If you don’t have a place for a wall, start by building a tower of stones. You might think of a more creative way, using photos or words or journal entries made into a collage. Building any type of Ebenezer is important because it does three things:
It causes us to look back and capture the good and great things God has helped us with. Sometimes we only celebrate graduations and life accomplishments, passing by the everyday miracles that God provided in our midst.
Raising an Ebenezer goes beyond “I’m thankful for _______” because it actually gives glory to God when we say “Thus far, the LORD has helped us”.
The words ‘thus far’ allow us to capture this moment in time, but also will give us hope and vision for the future. When we look back at all that God has done, we are encouraged to know He will do it again as we look into a new year.
Come Thou fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace
Streams of mercy never ceasing
Call for songs of loudest praise
Here I raise my Ebenezer
Here by Thy great help I've come
And I hope by Thy good pleasure
Safely to arrive at home
Prone to wander, Lord I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here's my heart, oh take and seal it
Seal it for Thy courts above
We are prone to wander. Let’s seal our hearts by being Ebenezer people! I look forward to hearing about your own Ebenezers - the ones you’ve started and the ones you will start this month.