Remember The Stones

Introduction – Like a Rock

Years ago, Bob Seger wrote a song called “Like a Rock.”

It wasn’t meant to be a hymn, but if you listen with spiritual ears, you can hear one hiding inside.

He sings:

> “Like a rock, standing arrow-straight,

Like a rock, charging from the gate,

Like a rock, the sun upon my skin—

Hard against the wind.”

It’s a song of remembering—looking back on life and realizing how strong, how steady, how unshakable he once felt.

But the refrain ends almost wistfully. He keeps repeating, “Like a rock,” as if to say, I used to be that way.

If you’ve lived long enough, you know that feeling.

You remember when faith felt simple and clear.

When strength seemed endless.

When you knew who you were and where you were headed.

Then years rolled by. Winds picked up. Doubts blew in.

And somewhere along the way, you realized—you weren’t as rock-solid as you once thought.

The ache of that song isn’t just nostalgia.

It’s the human condition—trying to hold on to something steady in a world that keeps shifting beneath your feet.

That’s why God gave His people a monument of stone.

Not a playlist, not a photograph, but twelve heavy rocks stacked on the riverbank, each one declaring:

“God brought us through.”

---

The Story at the River

Let’s step into the story.

The Israelites had been waiting forty long years for this moment.

Behind them was wilderness.

Ahead of them was promise.

Between them stood a river in flood.

Joshua, their new leader, told the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant to walk straight into the water.

Now, the Jordan wasn’t a trickling stream.

It was harvest season—the water high, swift, dangerous.

Yet when the priests stepped in, the river stopped.

It “stood up in a heap,” Scripture says, and the people crossed on dry ground.

Can you imagine that first footstep on the riverbed?

Mud that should have swallowed a sandal now held firm.

Children ran across, wide-eyed.

Mothers gripped the hands of the elderly.

Every step was miracle.

And when they reached the other side, God spoke again.

He said, “Choose twelve men, one from each tribe. Tell them to go back to the middle of the Jordan, right where the priests are standing, and pick up a stone.”

Each man bent down, picked up a stone large enough to shoulder, and carried it to camp.

There, at a place called Gilgal, they stacked those stones into a monument.

God said, “When your children ask you in time to come, ‘What mean these stones?’ you shall tell them…”

You shall tell them the story of My faithfulness.

---

The Purpose of Remembering

Why stones?

Because stones don’t fade.

They don’t wilt like flowers or crumble like parchment.

They stand—silent witnesses that God keeps His word.

We build monuments for the same reason we take photographs or write in journals.

We need reminders of where we’ve been and Who brought us here.

Faith, you see, doesn’t grow in forgetfulness.

It grows in remembrance.

Ellen White once wrote, “We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.”

That’s not just poetic wisdom; it’s survival instruction for the soul.

Forgetfulness is the rust that eats away at faith.

Memory is the polish that keeps it shining.

So God says, “Stack the stones. Tell the story. Remember.”

---

Our Modern Forgetfulness

We live in a culture that runs fast and remembers poorly.

News cycles last hours.

Birthdays flash by in notifications.

We scroll through memories without stopping to feel them.

But God still calls His people to pause—to remember.

Because forgetting breeds fear, but remembering fuels faith.

When you’re standing before a new challenge—your own Jordan River—you need reminders that the same God who parted waters yesterday can do it again today.

Every miracle forgotten becomes a miracle harder to believe next time.

So, He gives us memorials.

He gives us communion bread, Sabbath sunsets, answered prayers, baptism memories, and even birthdays and anniversaries.

He gives us moments that whisper, “Look how far you’ve come, and Who carried you here.”

---

Birthdays, Anniversaries, and Stones

A birthday isn’t just about candles and cake—it’s a personal stone of remembrance.

It marks another year that God sustained breath, health, and grace.

An anniversary isn’t only about flowers—it’s a reminder that God’s covenant love still holds two hearts together.

Even a graduation or recovery milestone becomes a stone—testifying, “God was faithful through that season too.”

Think of the twelve stones at Gilgal as the nation’s birthday party and wedding anniversary rolled into one.

It marked the day Israel was reborn as a people of promise and renewed their covenant with their Deliverer.