By: Holly Minion
One evening, I was listening to a sermon that was preached about the 12 stones that were made into an altar after the crossing of the Jordan River in Joshua 4.
And it came to pass, when all the people were clean passed over Jordan, that the LORD spake unto Joshua, saying, Take you twelve men out of the people, out of every tribe a man, And command ye them, saying, Take you hence out of the midst of Jordan, out of the place where the priests' feet stood firm, twelve stones, and ye shall carry them over with you, and leave them in the lodging place, where ye shall lodge this night. Then Joshua called the twelve men, whom he had prepared of the children of Israel, out of every tribe a man: And Joshua said unto them, Pass over before the ark of the LORD your God into the midst of Jordan, and take you up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder, according unto the number of the tribes of the children of Israel: That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones? Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD; when it passed over Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off: and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever.
The preacher made an interesting statement that made me stop and go back to listen to that part again. Those stones must have been a heavy burden to carry. Why couldn't a God who just made the waters of that great river to part just assemble that altar Himself?
But sometimes God gives us a heavy burden to carry, because when He relieves us of that burden, we can look back at the landmark He made of those burdens and we can say to ourselves and to others:
"Look at what God has done."
I can look back on my life and see many heavy burdens. But one of the greatest joys of my life is the ability I have to point to the amazing things God made out of those hard times and tell others about what God has done in my life through those burdens.
I don’t know what burdens you are carrying today. But remember, we serve the God who makes the impossible things possible, and the God who makes monuments of glory out of our worst moments in this life.