Stones of Remembrance
Summer 2008 - City Speak
by Lori Hatcher
Everyone loves stories. I suspect that is why Jesus chose to wrap so many of his most important lessons in stories. I fear that in the age of instant everything and fifteen-second sound bytes, we are losing our ability to tell stories. Oh, I’m not talking about “Handsome Prince stories,” as my starry-eyed girls would call them, or “Big ugly monster stories,” but faith stories like the ones the Old Testament commands us to tell our children.
God also tells us to use visuals. For example, after God parted the Jordan River and the children of Israel walked across dry ground into the Promised Land, God commanded them to set up “stones of remembrance.” He told them to take 12 stones out of the river and construct a memorial. Why? “. . . so that this will be a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’ you should tell them, ‘The waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the ark of the Lord’s covenant. . .Therefore these stones will always be a memorial” (Joshua 4:6-7).
