Thus far the Lord has helped us

If you read through the Old Testament, you'll notice that the Israelites seemed rather fond of setting up altars and stones and monuments just about everywhere they went.  They built them after crossing the Jordan, after hearing the 10 commandments, and after God came to them in dreams.  In a world before blogs and facebook newsfeeds, people needed a way to remember events.  So they would set up these stones in certain places, and seeing the stones would remind them of the laws God gave them in this place, or the dream God planted in that place. 

My favorite story of one of these stone piles is in 1 Samuel 7.  The Philistines are about to attack the Israelites, so Samuel instructs them to cry out to God, and God saves them.  To make sure they always remember how God rescued them in that place, Samuel builds one of those stone altars:  "Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, 'Thus far the Lord has helped us.'" (1 Samuel 7:12)  "Ebenezer" translates as "stone of help."  Every time the Israelites saw that stone after that, they remembered that it was called "stone of help" because God had helped them and brought them that far.

Right now, it's very easy for me to remember just how far God has brought me over the past few months.  It's almost overwhelming when I think about it because of how fresh it all still is. 

But I know it won't always be so fresh, so I want to raise my own Ebenezer to remind myself of what God's done in my life when the dust has been scrubbed from my feet and my suitcases are back in storage.  I want a visual that I can look at and say wow--look at how much God helped me. 

So today, I took some time to pick out pictures from my trip that illustrate how God is my helper.  I made a collage with these pictures, the boarding passes from my first solo flight, and a printout of 1 Samuel 7:12.  This collage will hang on my wall, and no matter how far from Kenya I feel here, I can look at this and truly say "Thus far the Lord has helped me."