Ebenezer

…“Up to this point the Lord has helped us!”
1 Samuel 7:12 (NLT)

Two battles raged here.  Two battles lost by Israel.  The Ark of the Covenant was stolen here.  Can you imagine that?  Here’s God, encapsulating some mysterious element of Himself in a box to be taken care of by this one tribe of people…and they manage to lose it.  Here at this one spot!  Seems like bad ground…brown fields. Then comes the turnaround, the Philistines are defeated and Israel gets the Ark back.  So Samuel takes a stone and turns it on end and calls the place Ebenezer – the stone of help, and declares that “Up to this point the Lord has helped us.”

Literally speaking, an Ebenezer is a "stone of help," or a reminder of God’s Real, Holy Presence and Divine aid. Spiritually and theologically speaking, an Ebenezer can be nearly anything that reminds us of God’s presence and help: the Bible, the Sacramental Elements, a cross, a picture, a fellow believer, a hymn – those things which serve as reminders of God’s love, God’s Real Presence, and God’s assistance are "Ebenezers."

I don’t know how I got to I Samuel.  Yesterday I had lunch with my pastor and she said a couple times that (for me) things were different now, referring to my journey into faith.  So last night I started thinking about how things are different now and just what that means to me.  Then, ah yes – that’s it, I started thinking about the New Year approaching and how things (spiritually speaking) had seemed so grim at the beginning of this year and I thought about Samuel and Israel, the lost battles, the lost Ark… you know how the mind works…

When I came across verse 12 and read what Samuel said, these words caused me to look back over the past few years.  Unbelief, disbelief, trying to go it alone.  I had lost battles and, in some weird metaphoric way, had even lost that bit of myself that may have contained some mystical element of God.  Yet, through all this, I was well provided for physically, financially, relationally and so on.  Up to this point, maybe without even knowing it…the Lord had helped me.

End of December.  Another year gone.  But this year is different!  I enter the new year looking forward.  Forward to a life of learning to have faith.  A life where God is welcome.  No idea where it all leads, but I look forward with anticipation.

There was a moment not too many weeks ago when things changed.  I can look to the past and to the future and see a clear line of demarcation.  It is that moment that I set a stone upright and call it Ebenezer.  I don’t know what “thing” in my life represents the stone – maybe the fact that I am actually going to join a church?  Maybe that church is my Ebenezer?

Here I raise mine Ebenezer;

hither by thy help I'm come;

and I hope, by thy good pleasure,

safely to arrive at home.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,

wandering from the fold of God;

he, to rescue me from danger,

interposed his precious blood.

 (Robert Robinson 1735-1790)