Memorials

How in the world will our children know who God is and what He is all about if we don't show and tell them? Obviously, they won't.

When people talk to me about people in foreign countries (and in the US, for that matter) who have never heard the name of Jesus Christ they often equate that concept with an unfair God. Would God send these "innocent people" to a Christless eternity? Without getting into these specifics (read Acts 4:12!) I usually start my response by reminding the questioner that in the Garden of Eden, and again after the Flood, that every father, mother and child on the face of the earth knew who God was and what he had said. Every one of then. So if there has been someone unfaithful, it hasn't been God, but fathers. Obviously, if fathers had been faithful from that day to this, every person on the face of the earth would have heard of the faithful God. But WE have not been faithful. God has been completely faithful.

I love the story in Exodus of God delivering His people from slavery and into the Promised Land. He said that one representative from each tribe should pile a stone on the West Bank of the Jordan so that "when your children ask for generations to come you could tell them" exactly what God has said and done. A stone tells a story to our children.

My wife has helped me so much with establishing traditions. One of our Memorial Day traditions is to go listen to the stones. We listen to the stone at the head of my faithful and dead grandfather, Owen. We listen to the stone at the head of Nik's grandfather, Richard. We listen to the instructions as they roll out of the lives of Ervin and Mildred and Jean and Bea (Bea is still living!). We are still watching and learning from Richard and Paula and Pam and Dennis. May God give us many years till we establish these stones.

A few rocks are just rocks. They may be inscribed with words, but they tell sad and selfish stories of faithlessness (think of the rocks at the head of Cain or Ham or Esau). They tell the stories of sons who could not get over the sins of their youth, who couldn't get others-focused, who did not rest in the promise of God. They are just rocks. Their own kids don't care what the stones say, because they know what the lives said. But there are other rocks that are a testament that God can and does change (man transformed) the heart.

Abel (you didn't live long, but you lived right).

Noah (you devoted all of your best years to one God-sized project in one place).

Jacob (with all your selfishness God still used your faith, Israel).

Erv (you, Mr. farmer, lived with simple faith)

Owen (you gave real life to one woman and died after a heart attack on the 4th tee box).

Richard (you came to Christ late in life--but you came !)

Oh, God, let me be faithful to expose my children to rocks that speak loudly! May You give them the ears to hear and the eyes to see. One day I want my rock to tell a story of God's faithfulness.

"What is this rock for?" It's another testament to the God who is faithful and transforms the hearts of men and women.