Stones of Remembrance

As we concluded in the last post, reflecting on the past can be for either good or destructive purposes.  When it’s to recount the goodness of God in our lives, remembering to be grateful and give Him the praise for what He has done, it can bring great comfort and strength in times of trouble.


Many years ago, when our three sons were still living at home, my wife Sherril attended a women’s conference where the theme was “Stones of Remembrance.”  It focused on the importance of building lasting memories of times when God’s work or intervention had been obvious in the lives of one or more family members.  The idea was to preserve the story of each such event through a unique object on display in the home and to retell it from time to time in the family, as well as share it with others. 

These objects would serve as teaching tools for their children to remind them of God’s love for them and His faithfulness never to leave or forsake them.  Every Christian family should have many such stories to talk about, both as reminders of all He has done for them and as a very natural way of sharing with others a witness of God’s goodness.

The Biblical reference that was used at the conference to teach this concept was the story about the Israelites’ building a mound of stones after crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land (we looked at that briefly in the last blog post).  God told them to do this so that when their children asked why the stones were there, they would be reminded to tell them about the amazing things He had done for them.

We took this admonition to heart and decided, even though our boys were already in on near their teens, that we would begin the process with them in hopes that they would carry the idea with them when they started their own families.  So we made a plan.  At the next meal together we would ask them to think about a time when they remembered God had protected them or done something significant in their lives and to talk about it at the next meal. 

To our delight they each came with a story that we all remembered well.  One recalled a time when he had had a bicycle accident on the way home from a job he had in the neighborhood.  When he arrived at home he acted strangely and couldn’t remember anything that had happened except that he thought he had fallen off his bike, and then in the middle of the afternoon he went to bed.  As he  continued to ask the same questions, we took him to the emergency room.  We were very concerned about brain injury and prayed for him.  Within a few hours we were very thankful that he returned to normal, except that to this day he has not remembered how the accident happened.

Another son told about the time when he had innocently accepted a ice cream cone from a strange man and eaten it.  Thankfully, the man’s intentions had been honorable, but we realized the potential danger he had been in and that we needed to teach him how to deal with any similar situation with a stranger in the future.

Finally, our third son remembered the time he was climbing in a small tree outside the military chapel where we attended church for many years.  He was playing alone at the time and, slipping from a branch, he fell but not to the ground.  Instead, the back of his t-shirt caught on the stub of a broken limb, pulling the neck of the shirt tight around his neck and leaving him dangling from the tree.  At just that moment a soldier friend “happened” to walk by and, seeing him in distress, rescued him from a near hanging.

As these events had taken place many years earlier we had no artifacts or “stones of remembrance” to use as objects to remind us of the stories.  So, we decided to be creative.  We bought each one a small cabinet that could be hung on the wall.  It had a glass door (about 8” x 10”) with a number of small display compartments.  In the future they could place some relevant object as they saw God’s hand at work in their lives.  In the meantime, we would get them started with a reminder of the events they shared – a picture of a bicycle for the first son, a miniature ice cream cone for the second and a small piece of cloth with a hole in it for the third.

I encourage you to develop or, better, guide your family in developing a collection of "stones" with unique stories of how God has worked in your lives on special occasions and retell those stories as often as the opportunity seems appropriate.  It’s a practical Biblical principle that can help us in a day of information overload and incessant distractions to remember and focus our gratitude and praise on the One who loves us and gave Himself for us.

Everyone, especially children, loves to hear a story and the object embodies it.