More Rock Piles and Dying Stories

We ended school last week with the story of one rock pile built to commemorate a covenant of peace. And I wrote about that. Then on Sunday, another rock pile--rather two--figured into the sermon. I put the Scripture text below--but in essence this rock pile was invisible to the human eye until a miracle of God brought the rocks to visibility, to accessibility. It is one of my favorite "pile of rocks" stories in the Bible. Has been for a couple of years now.

As a friend of mine noted, there are many rock piles in Scripture, making it pretty easy to come across such stories with some regularity--but still the thematic nature of of all these rock piles struck me, making me all the more serious about what my pastor recommended: take time to remember the dying stories of life, the ones that shouldn't die. This pile of rocks was placed so that the Hebrews children would ask their fathers, what is this rock pile all about?

"What stories are dying all around you that need to be revived?" he asked us.

A thought-provoking question, especially in this culture that is so driven by that which is immediately urgent, whatever it may be. Who takes time to stop and consider such a question? Still, it is important. He closed by petitioning us to make note of those memorial rock piles, prayed that they inspire us to run the race well that takes us past them. He quoted this verse:

Hbr 12:1
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset [us], and let us run with patience the race that is set before us...
...and he reminded us to seek that vitality for future purpose so that we might live well this verse from Hebrews 12.

Funny, that word vitality; it is another thing that has come before my eyes multiple times lately. One reference to it was in a health magazine. In it, the author of The Creation Health Breakthrough makes the following observations about vitality: "As a society, we judge our health by what we don't have; so if you don't have high blood pressure or diabetes, we figure you must be healthy." But she adds that what many Americans don't understand is that "if you have clean arteries but have a life without purpose, you're still missing a key ingredient of vitality."

The most significant reminder (aka rock pile) about the beauty of that vitality of life, however, came to me not from anything in my daily life or reading. Rather it came to me in my prayer life. Over the course of the last couple of years, I've walked in a more interactive, intimate experience with You, my Lord. One of the observational results of this to me was an incredible attraction to You that hadn't been a part of me before--an attraction to Your personality that took me a long time to define. It was in part this supreme vitality, but layered with that vitality was something I had a hard time quantifying until I realized--I was experiencing a personality completely devoid of all neuroses, empty of every hang-up, free of any inhibition that was driven by self-consciousness. Such "pure health" would come across as cocky, were it not for the depths of love and outward-interest that completely imbued it. A brush with such a soul can hardly help but leave the recipient so temporarily rich with vitality that the effect is ironically dizzying and weakening. It is this vitality that is--for me--the rock pile hidden under these currents, memorialized in the story of the Jordan Crossing.

It is a story to remember and share: the incredible enjoyment to be found in Your company--David spoke of it when he sang, "Better is one day in your house than a thousand elsewhere." He wasn't just waxing poetic. He was piling memorial rocks. Help me to ever see them, Lord!

Memorials to the Jordan Crossing
When all the people were safely across the river, the Lord said to Joshua, 2 "Now choose twelve men, one from each tribe. 3 Tell the men to take twelve stones from where the priests are standing in the middle of the Jordan and pile them up at the place where you camp tonight."
4 So Joshua called together the twelve men 5 and told them, "Go into the middle of the Jordan, in front of the Ark of the Lord your God. Each of you must pick up one stone and carry it out on your shoulder-twelve stones in all, one for each of the twelve tribes. 6 We will use these stones to build a memorial. In the future, your children will ask, `What do these stones mean to you?' 7 Then you can tell them, `They remind us that the Jordan River stopped flowing when the Ark of the Lord's covenant went across.' These stones will stand as a permanent memorial among the people of Israel."
8 So the men did as Joshua told them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan River, one for each tribe, just as the Lord had commanded Joshua. They carried them to the place where they camped for the night and constructed the memorial there.
9 Joshua also built another memorial of twelve stones in the middle of the Jordan, at the place where the priests who carried the Ark of the Covenant were standing. The memorial remains there to this day.
10 The priests who were carrying the Ark stood in the middle of the river until all of the Lord's instructions, which Moses had given to Joshua, were carried out. Meanwhile, the people hurried across the riverbed. 11 And when everyone was on the other side, the priests crossed over with the Ark of the Lord. 12 The armed warriors from the tribes of Reuben, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh led the Israelites across the Jordan, just as Moses had directed. 13 These warriors-about forty thousand strong-were ready for battle, and they crossed over to the plains of Jericho in the Lord's presence.
14 That day the Lord made Joshua great in the eyes of all the Israelites, and for the rest of his life they revered him as much as they had revered Moses.
15 The Lord had said to Joshua, 16 "Command the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant to come up out of the riverbed." 17 So Joshua gave the command. 18 And as soon as the priests carrying the Ark of the Lord's covenant came up out of the riverbed, the Jordan River flooded its banks as before.