Guidelines devotional blogger, Darlene Sala, tells a story about a family who was involved in a serious automobile accident.
The severity of the wreck completely totaled the car. It was amazing there were no fatalities. In fact, not one family member suffered any long terms injuries or effects from the accident. What they did next was unusual, but ingenious.
So thankful that they lived through this harrowing ordeal that they took the mangled wreckage of the car and formed it into an art collage on their family room wall. When visitors asked about the unusual piece, it provides them an opportunity to express their thankfulness for God’s providential protection.
In today’s Bible reading we read of Joshua leading Israel across the Jordan River into Canaan, the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Forty years of wilderness wanderings characterized by grumbling, rebellion, disobedience, defection, and death had now come to an end.
603,548 men of war perished in the wilderness. Only Caleb and Joshua of their generation survived. Every man and woman over 20 had died. Babies born during that era are now approaching 40. Now they’ve arrived to claim their God-ordained destiny.
Just like when Israel left Egypt and the Red Sea parted, so did the water of the Jordan River. As the people began marching through on dry land imagine the anticipation. The excitement. The exhilaration. It would be a day they would never forget.
So, to memorialize the occasion, God commanded 12 men, one from every tribe, to pick up a stone from the river bed and carry them across to where they would lodge. Joshua then explained why.
“This may be a sign among you when your children ask in time to come, saying, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’ Then you shall answer them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord; when it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. And these stones shall be for a memorial to the children of Israel forever” (Josh. 4:6-7).
In a similar way, we do th