Mental Monuments

This Christmas was a little stranger than usual for me. For one thing, I'm usually busy baking lots of goodies for people (and us). And another thing, I'm usually shopping here and there for things to get before the last week of Christmas so all I have to do is buy that little "cherry on top" gift for my wife. Well, not this year. I hadn't done any baking until Christmas Eve and my Christmas shopping didn't even start until the Friday before Christmas. So my wife and I got in the car and made a mad dash to Lincoln while I made a mental semi-panicked checklist of all I had to get for Christmas.

While we were cruising down the interstate, a truck with an empty car trailer passed us. At that moment, God gave me a "Selah moment". While most people would look at that wobbly trailer and think of it as nothing more than that, God revealed it to me as a Jordan River Stone. Allow me to be a bit long-winded to clarify what I'm talking about.

A while ago, we went to visit some great friends in New Jersey and decided to make it a nice road trip. That went wonderfully, but on the way back, our car broke down in Pennsylvania. Now Pennsylvania is a beautiful place to see, but at this time, it was cloudy, we were in the middle of nowhere and there was traffic work going on that caused about a 17 mile traffic jam. So about 3/4 of the way through, our car died-just died. So I pulled it off to the side of the road and just stared at the car. And then I start to wonder what we're going to do in the middle of nowhere without a cellphone and if that weren't enough, it started to rain. So my wife and began to pray and we prayed hard. Not even 5 minutes later, a pickup truck with Washington license plates pulled up and said that they had an empty car trailer from a bummed car deal they had and that they can load us up and get us to a garage and a hotel. Praise God! And if that wasn't an awesome way of showing God's provision, while we were loading the car, we got a little push-happy and high centered it on the trailer and couldn't get it off. So with us still praying, a state trooper just "happened" to pass by and was able to radio a tow truck with the right equipment to get us on the trailer right and, amidst the traffic jam, was only about 5 minutes away. And then we didn't even have to pay for that-the men who was helping us paid for it! So to make an already long story short(er), we got the car fixed and made it home with no problems.

One of my absolute favorite books of the Bible is Joshua. I love the battles, the encouragement and the faithfulness of God to His faithful followers. In chapter 4, Joshua and the Isrealites were already on their way to conquer the land God promised. One of the many miracles God did for them was He cut off the stream so they could cross the Jordan River. But before they got across God told them to take a stone from the middle of the river and carry it with them(4:1-3) and to make a monument or reminder of what God had done (4:4-9).

God is still doing those types of miracles today. It seems that we forget some of the things He's done in the past to show His glory. So my challenge to you as you read this is to think back about the amazing things God's done in your life. Have you made "mental monuments" of those moments so whenever you see those things in your daily life, you can be reminded of God's faithfulness to His promises? And for the future, remember to pick out a mental monument so you can always be reminded of the goodness of the Lord.