Day 2
What do those stones mean to you?
It’s easy to read stories in the Bible from the perspective of already knowing what happens, but can you imagine what it would have been like to live through some of those stories in real time? To get thrown into a hole with a bunch of lions? To be a freshly freed slave that is suddenly pinned between your captors and a huge sea?
It can be easy to conceptually know about God, but the real gold comes when He personally reveals Himself to us in the tension of our actual lives. At the Red Sea, the Israelites were cornered and desperate. They had to reach past what they had known about God up until that moment and hang suspended in that vulnerable place, waiting as He came to their rescue and transformed their view of Him. They didn’t truly know that God was a deliverer until He actually intervened. It’s the same for us: God uses the messy happenings of our lives as the context and the conduit through which He teaches us His nature.
This can reframe how we view our circumstances, especially the challenging ones. What if God is purposefully orchestrating every season to be the perfect stage on which to show us new sides of His face that we don’t yet know? I like to ask Him this, especially when the throws of life are causing me to lose sight of Him:
What part of Your heart are you wanting to make me confident in through this circumstance?
Who are you offering to be for me in this season that I didn’t need or know about in a past one?
Read Joshua 3:14-4:7
In this story, we find another defining moment for the Jewish people’s understanding of God. As the they witness God defy nature to make a way for them, He asks them to take stones out of the dried up riverbed and use them as a tangible way to remember who He is and what He has done. These stones that were once hidden in water had now become like uncovered treasure—mementos from the very place where the miracle had occurred. They creatively rearranged the rocks as an expression of worship and as a visual testimony of what God had done.
This is such a powerful key for commemorating our transformative moments. We can take what we are learning about God in our hearts and make a visual expression of it— as a way to tell Him and others what He means to us. As a way to remember.
Creative Prompt:
Let’s try this out!
First, quiet your heart in Jesus’ presence, thanking Him for His nearness. Ask Him to highlight a defining moment or season in your life when you learned something about Him that You didn't truly know before. Take some time to reflect or write about that time, thanking Him for who He became for you through it.
Next, ask Him what aspect of His character He wants to highlight to you now, for this time of your life (see the questions I mentioned in bold above).
Now, pick one or both of these two reflections (His past faithfulness or present promise) and paint or draw a visual testimony, memorializing what He showed you. Create a picture that in some way depicts what God said or the impression it left on your heart.
As you create, don’t get too caught up in trying to make it perfect :) just use it as an opportunity to keep talking to Him and meditate on the truth. After you finish, put the picture in a place you see often, to remind you of who He is!