Day 101

Joshua 3:1–4:24; Luke 14:7-35; Psalm 80:1-19; Proverbs 12:27-28

BY NOW, WE’VE probably become accustomed to the fact that the children of Israel were a passionate and dramatic people, and that when something big was about to happen, they celebrated and memorialized it in a big way. Today was big!

“The LORD told Joshua, ‘Today I will begin to make you a great leader in the eyes of all the Israelites. They will know that I am with you, just as I was with Moses’” (Joshua 3:7).

The Levites carried the Ark of the Covenant into the Jordan River, and the water stopped flowing. The people crossed over on dry ground into the Promised Land! The excitement was almost palpable in today’s reading. Finally, the Promised Land was tangible.

Joshua instructed chosen leaders to gather large stones from the dry riverbed and haul them into camp. The people created a memorial from the stones. A similar one was created on the dry floor of the Jordan River, and when all had crossed over, the water once again began making its way to the Dead Sea.

Joshua said to the Israelites,

“In the future your children will ask, ‘What do these stones mean?’ Then you can tell them, ‘This is where the Israelites crossed the Jordan on dry ground.’ For the LORD your God dried up the river right before your eyes, and he kept it dry until you were all across, just as he did at the Red Sea when he dried it up until we had all crossed over. He did this so all the nations of the earth might know that the LORD’s hand is powerful, and so you might fear the LORD your God forever.”

Think about your life. What moments can you remember in which you saw God at work in a dramatic and undeniable way?

The importance of remembering is something we’ve seen instilled at the core level of God’s people in Scripture. In some cases, the people were told to write things above their doorposts. At other times, they were to remind one another of their origin story by talking about it continually. The existence of the Bible itself shows us how intentional God is about us remembering things.

Today, we saw a memorial set up at the location of the crossing so that what happened there could be remembered in the future. The people would need to remember what happened there, because they’d have every opportunity to forget —as we do.

What would memorial stones look like in your life? Perhaps it’s as simple as writing things down. You may or may not be a person who enjoys journaling, but writing can help us follow in this great tradition of remembering God’s faithfulness. Our lives are very busy, and we can all too easily forget what God has spoken or done. But when the fog settles in, and we feel lost, we will have these memorial pages that we might remember. Over years, this can become our own testament of God’s faithfulness in our lives —our own retelling of the story of God in our story. And because we’ve taken the time along the way to remember, we will also be passing on the story to future generations.

PRAYER:

Turn us again to yourself, O LORD God of Heaven’s Armies. Make your face shine down upon us. Only then will we be saved.