Good morning,
Praise the Lord for another glorious day in Jesus's kingdom. It is still like Summer. Sunita called from Dhaka, Bangladesh a few times. She shared that the Lord blessed her work in Bangladesh. Dhaka is a city with 13 million people. The country of Bangladesh struggles with chronic poverty and natural disasters. Our US government spends millions of dollars in terms of foreign aid to Bangladesh. Much of this funding is given through the work of World Vision. Sunita and her team are in charge of monitoring that these funds are used properly and are invested in the area where they are intended to be. Sunita will be in Orissa, today . She is planning to visit G' Udayagiri, one of the sites of intense persecution of Christians by the Hindu Extremists. She will be meeting with some Christian leaders of the area. She will be visiting the Moorshead Memorial Hospital and the Nursing training School, along with the staff and the doctors there.She is staying for four days with my mom, my brother, and his two children, in a rented house in Bhubaneswar. She will be flying back to Washington, DC, arriving this coming Sunday.
One of the great blessings of summer 2009 for us was Janice,Micah and Simeon spend almost two weeks with us here in New York. Laureen, our resident musician and pianist, spent lots of time playing piano and singing hymns with Micah and Simeon. Their parents sing hymns before their bed time and Micah has memorized some hymns. One of her favorite hymns is, "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing". This hymn is based 1 Samuel 7:12, “Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far has the LORD helped us.”
This event occurred over eleven hundred years before the time of Jesus. The people of Israel had conquered much of the Promised Land, but it hadn’t been easy. The infant nation was still surrounded by many powerful enemies. In fact, twenty years before the event in this text was one of the darkest days in ancient Israel. In a single day, Israel not only suffered a terrible military defeat but also lost the Ark of the Covenant into enemy hands. The Ark was the symbol of God’s presence among them. This was the worst disaster imaginable. Though Israel soon regained the ark nothing was the same again. The terrible memory of that day would continue to discourage the nation for a generation.
Twenty years later Samuel, the great prophet of the nation, called a meeting of the nation’s leaders to tell them that if they want to experience the blessings of God, they need to return to their faith in him. Times had been hard, but they would never be any better until they turned to God. The entire nation responded positively. At Mizpah, the nation gathered in prayer to seek God’s blessing again. Just at that moment, the Philistine army, the dreaded enemy, saw an opportunity to attack while Israel’s warriors were in prayer, but Samuel learned of the treachery. The soldiers formed battle lines. This time the Philistines turned back in defeat. It was a great victory for Israel!
To mark the occasion of the great military victory and the day of their great return to faith, Samuel raised a memorial marker. From that day on, whoever saw the marker would be reminded of the great events of the day. Samuel gave the marker a name, calling it Ebenezer, a term that meant “the help of the Lord.” “Thus far has the LORD helped us,” he said. It was a memorial to God’s faithfulness. Here we raise our Ebenezer because “Thus far has the Lord helped us.”
Israel didn’t need a memorial to the tough times they had been through. After all, they had experienced them personally. As humans we don’t need a memorial to our loss and grief. Some things you never forget, so the ancient Israelites were not likely to forget the twenty years of discouragement.
Memory is an amazing thing. Psychologists tell us that we never really forget anything. Every experience, both good and bad, is filed securely in our mental memory banks. The problem is that sometimes we forget where we put it. Nevertheless, it is still there.
It is good that we forget some things. It is a part of our created survival mechanism. Yet, we never forget most of the really important things in life. Even when the memories start to grow dim, there are always many memorials to bring back our recall.
Israel didn’t need a memorial to remind them of what they had been through, any more than you need a memorial to remind us of our loved one and the loss we still remember all too well. They did need a special reminder of something that they could too easily lose in the darkness. That was the reason for the memorial that Samuel raised before them that day. The song says it well. “Here I raise my Ebenezer. Hither by thy help I’ve come.”
The memories of the hard times remain, sometimes very vividly. Sometimes too, the memory of God’s faithfulness remain. That was Samuel’s challenge. He wanted his people to not only remember what they had been through, but to never forget the Lord who had seen them through.
Robert Louis Stevenson, in one of his stories, told of a passenger ship crossing the Atlantic. It encountered a harsh storm that threatened to overwhelm the ship. The captain ordered the passengers below while the crew battled the storm above. At one point, the passengers grew impatient. They hadn’t heard a word from the bridge in the longest time. Finally, a volunteer ventured out to see how things were going. A short time later, the man returned to the huddled passengers. “Did you see the captain? What did he say? Are we going to make it?” The messenger responded, ‘I didn’t talk to the captain. But I saw him. He looked at me and smiled. All is well!” And that was enough!
In the midst of our heartache and loss, the God of heaven smiled. The storm still raged, but our Captain smiled. All is well. Here we raise our Ebenezer. Thus far, the Lord has helped us.
In Christ,
Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4Q5vVa0q8Q
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment