Picking Up Stones

I AM A STONE. A very important one, I might add. I was selected along with eleven other stones to memorialize one of the most unusual events in history.

Are you interested in history? Fascinating stuff, you know. Sit down for a moment, and I’ll tell you my story.

It happened one year during the annual spring floods. Until then, I had had a pretty easy life, lodged securely as I was in a riverbed. The waters of the Jordan had rolled over me for I don’t know how many years.

Quite early on this particular morning, I began to notice a change. Things around me seemed to get brighter. I looked up to find my watery environment disappearing. In a short time, I was totally exposed. The warm sunlight felt nice. Then I noticed the people on the eastern bank of the river.

People! Thousands of them! Soon a few men carrying what looked like a large chest started toward me. They stopped about fifteen feet away. I found out later they were priests, and the box they carried was called an ark.

By this time, the riverbed was amazingly dry, not muddy as one would expect. Then the people on the bank began crossing. They were all smiling and shouting. I could tell they were excited.

The priests never flinched as the babbling stream of humanity swept past them. I kept glancing nervously upstream, expecting the river to return any minute. No one else seemed to share my insecurity.

When everyone was safely across, twelve men were sent back to the river bottom. One of them headed straight for me. He stooped down and, with one jerk, hefted me to his shoulders. The other men picked up similar boulders. We were carried up the western bank and then taken to the place where all these people pitched their tents for the night. There all twelve of us were piled carefully to make a small pyramid.

Next, a man named Joshua, obviously the leader of these people, made a speech about us. In time to come, he said, when your children ask about these stones, tell them that “Israel crossed this Jordan on dry ground. For the Lord, your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed, just as the Lord your God had done to the Red Sea, which He dried up before us until we had crossed; that all the people of the earth may know that the hand of the Lord is mighty, so that you may fear the Lord your God forever.”

Now I knew what had happened to the Jordan. The Creator had simply stopped her flow, far upstream, to keep His word to His covenant people.

It shouldn’t be surprising that God can dry up a river. In the beginning, He spoke everything into existence, and His Word is still the dynamic behind nature.

What do you think keeps the world rotating on its axis as it speeds around the sun? Who keeps that sun whirling around the centre of our galaxy, which, in turn, spins through space at millions of miles per minute? With effortless ease, God keeps His universe running so precisely that you can set your watch by it. All nature owns His sovereign power. Funny, it should be constantly doubted by men.

Power simply means the ability to do something. God has the ability to do anything, anywhere, anytime. The only thing He won’t do is break His Word. His word is backed by His character. Both are immutable.

Our little monument was erected as a reminder to future generations that the Lord’s power can make a path through any obstacle. Even something ominous as the swollen Jordan could not separate God’s people from God’s promise.

Do you feel cut off by circumstances from something the Lord had promised you? Especially from something promised in His Word? If so, then first check your own heart. Unbelief kept Israel out of Canaan for 40 years. It can also keep you from experiencing the blessing of God.

It is important to believe that the Lord is able to complete the good work He’s begun in you. He saved you out of the world (Egypt) to bring you into the full possession of every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus (Canaan).

As the ark led the way through the Jordan, so the Lord wants to lead you through every difficulty into the enjoyment of all that He has prepared for those who love Him.

As you move ahead by faith, remember that it’s God’s business to part the waters. It’s your business to follow close behind. But pick up a few stones along the way. Keep the evidence of God’s power at work in your life.

“Now to Him who is able to do as tangible exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.”

Note from the editor: This article is a reprint from the December 1979 edition of Asian Beacon.