For the last couple of years I have noticed that I am drawn to things antique and have been feeling nostalgic. Things that remind me of my childhood and years gone by. This summer I watched the eyes of my daughter roll back in her head as I suggested we go into some antique shops while on a road trip. She obliged me anyway, and in we went. This fall it was the same, although my oldest seemed to have a bit more appreciation for my stories and memories. I loved looking at and being "taken back" to a time with things I hadn't thought of in years. Its really less about the things and more about the memories that go along with it. I've slowly watched my girls become more interested as they have heard me speak of and point at different things and say, "Oh I remember that" or "we had that" or "I remember seeing that at my grandmothers house" etc..
I'm thankful for so much of my childhood as I have many great memories, and some not so great but that's okay too. I'm mostly that my mom and step-dad specifically saw fit that I knew who Jesus was and who I was in Him. The importance of having a relationship with Him and sharing His love with others. The importance of knowing and understanding His promises, and that all my hope is to be in Him and in Him alone. It has been remembering THAT specifically that has served me well in life.
Recently I was dealing with some traumatic news I was trying to process concerning the future of my school and job as well as some concerns about my husbands work with word of a possible strike. I had been truly struggling with deep worry and fear and it was tearing me up, making me almost physically ill. I had spent several days trying to digest it all on my own, wallowing in my own worry, trying not to burden my family, but yet I was a hot mess.
A few days later, my best friend called me, and some of the first words out of his mouth, when we actually began talking about it, was "Jen, lets take a look at your life and look at all the places where God has failed you.....oh that's right, there isn't any!"
After quite a long conversation of me processing, spilling my guts and tears and him reminding me of Gods promises and that I needed to "be still", I had settled down and finally collected myself. Everything He told me, I knew already, but my head was in a place where I needed to be reminded of God's promises and I needed to refocus. It was over the last several days I began to think more and more about this truth in my life....that God has never failed me. I have truly walked some extremely difficult roads, but it truly was a fact that my God has walked with me every step of the way and has ALWAYS provided.
I've been studying the use of memorial stones in the Bible. In the book of Joshua chapter 4. It is one of the climactic events in all of biblical history. The Israelites had waited forty years, but now the time had come. It is a poignant moment as they stride across the riverbed of the Jordan, opened for them by the miraculous power of God. Behind them, they leave the wearying decades of meandering around in a barren wilderness and the tragic memories of countless funerals for an entire generation of people who would not trust God's promises.
A new and welcome chapter opens before them! Before them lay a land richer than their dreams, more fruitful than their hopes, and more beautiful than their imagination. Now it is theirs by God's steadfast promise. It must have felt surreal to finally stand in Canaan, kind of like when you unlock the door to your first home. You've envisioned it, planned for it, imagined what you will do with it…but when you step in that front door, your emotions soar! To be the fulfillment of an ancient promise to Father Abraham must have been overwhelming. Their joy had been magnified by recent events. When they arrived at the Jordan, they found it is flood stage, menacing in its speed and dangerous from what it concealed. The river was impassible, its crossing impossible.
But God intervened. God rolled back the waters of the Jordan River, just as He had done with the Red Sea. God meant what He had said through Moses years before. Here was His signature again, in the same way, to assure His people that He was good to His word.
I imagine there were songs and shouts as God's people worshiped and exulted in Him. But there was also one important act that calls for our attention. After Israel crossed, God gave Joshua some very specific instructions, recorded in Joshua 4:1-3: After the entire nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the Lord spoke to Joshua, "Choose 12 men from the people, one man for each tribe, and command them, 'Take 12 stones from this place in the middle of the Jordan where the priests' feet are standing, carry them with you, and set them down at the place where you spend the night.' " Joshua did exactly what he was told, sending these select 12 men back to the riverbed of the Jordan where they were to bring back 12 stones—stones that at one point were buried, unreachable, covered by a challenge to the faith of God's people, but were now divinely accessible. Twelve men hoisted heavy stones to their shoulders from Jordan's floor and then piled them together in the Promised Land, by God's command. They were stacked there as a sign, an unmistakable marker at the very place where God had demonstrated His power to overcome any obstacle to His will.
Because stones don't naturally stack, there would come a day when Israel's children would ask for an explanation for this phenomenon. Here's the answer God wants the next generation to know: "Tell them the story," says God in v. 7, "of how the waters of the Jordan were cut off in front of the ark of the Lord's covenant. When it crossed the Jordan, the Jordan's waters were cut off."
In verses 23-24, For the Lord your God dried up the waters of the Jordan before you until you had crossed over, just as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which He dried up before us until we had crossed over. This is so that all the people of the earth may know that the Lord's hand is mighty, and so that you may always fear the Lord your God."
This is what happens when the impossible meets the promises of God. This is the outcome when the implausible comes up against the glorious riches of God in Christ Jesus.
As I have remembered my friends words, meant to get my attention to refocus on, not the negative that Satan wanted me to focus on, but on ALL God has done and will do. To me, this is the best way to be nostalgic. He simply wanted to remind me that God is TRUE to His promises to His people and to keep my focus on that. It doesn't mean that life doesn't get hard but His promises are still true. As much as I love looking at antiques that trigger memories of days gone by, this is truly such a remarkable way to remember what GOD has done in my past, where He has carried me. This reminder has caused me to begin writing down, or "placing" my own memorial stones......of all the times God has been faithful...to focus on THAT, to celebrate THAT, rather than what the enemy wants my focus to be.
The stones out of the Jordan marked the movements of God among His people. They testified of the willingness of a people to leave what they had known in order to go with God, to face challenges to their faith, to step into the water, to believe in what they could not see. As we face life's challenges, it can be so easy to lose our focus when we don't know what is ahead. I believe that God allows us memories and times to be nostalgic to give us moments to smile back at and to be used as strength to move forward. Although I would not want to relive every place that I have walked, I'm thankful for those "memorial stones" in my life that just continue to prove that although life is forever changing, He indeed is the same yesterday, today and forever and His promises are enough, He just wants us to keep our eyes on Him.
