Put Your Souvenir at the Crossroads

Throughout our house, we have reminders of the things that are important to us -- souvenirs from various places we've been: an Irish bodhrán we picked up in Galway, Ireland, a Venetian glass octopus from Venice, Italy, a whole slew of magnets from Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, Minnesota, Outer Banks, North Carolina, Williamsburg, Virginia, San Francisco, California, etc. Celtic crosses stand on a small wall bracket next to our front door. On the top of our piano, awards and trophies from my years as a piano student line the wall. In the den, an old-timey photo of my husband and me on our honeymoon gives the illusion that we're hanging out in a western saloon, but really, it's a reminder of Gatlinburg, Tennessee and our first week of married life seventeen years ago.

You get the idea. On the wall in our hallway hangs a small Thomas Kinkade print of a stone dwelling place with lit up windows next to a lake. A Bible verse is scripted out at the bottom: "But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (Joshua 24:15).

What a fitting end to the book of Joshua, and to Joshua's life spent entirely in the service of the Lord. Human like the rest of us, he must have had a list of mistakes that he wanted to forget, but we are only ever told about one of them -- his failure to check with the Lord before agreeing to his covenant with the Gibeonites (see Joshua 9 and my blog post about it).

This man was a strong and admirable leader -- not only of the Israelite nation, but of his own family, his own household. He led his family in the worship and the service of the Lord, and from his place at the head of the Israelite nation, he issued this challenge before his death to the people:

"But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord!"

The people responded back: "Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods!... We too will serve the Lord, because He is our God."

What follows is a covenant-like exchange among the people where they reiterate to Joshua their devotion to the Lord, where they remember their identity as the chosen people of God, and then this verse gives us the setting, which is important: "On that day, Joshua made a covenant for the people, and there at Shechem, he drew up for them decrees and laws. And Joshua recorded these things in the Book of the Law of God. Then he took a large stone and set it up there under the oak tree near the holy place of the Lord.

"'See!' he said to all the people. 'This stone will be a witness against us. It has heard all the words the Lord has said to us. It will be a witness against you if you are untrue to your God'" (Joshua 24:25-27).

If you walk away from this post thinking that this last chapter of Joshua is about a hearing rock, you've missed the point entirely.

First, look at the setting: "He took a large stone and set it up there under the oak near the holy place of the Lord." And then flip back to Genesis 12:6-7, where it says: "Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, 'To your offspring, I will give this land.' So [Abram] built an altar there to the Lord, Who had appeared to him."

I. love. bookends. It's the sweet spot where the story comes full circle. 

Bookend to the left: Abram comes to the great tree at Shechem and receives God's promise that his descendants will inherit the land. What a holy meeting between himself and the Lord, and what great hope came with that promise! 

Bookend to the right: Joshua meets with the Israelite nation, all of whom called Abraham their ancestor, at the great tree at Shechem to acknowledge that God has indeed fulfilled His promise to give them this land. What a holy meeting place!

So. cool! This same tree, this same place, was a marker of the beginning of a covenant and the completion of that covenant.

And Joshua sets up a large stone there as a witness, as a reminder to the Israelites -- almost like a souvenir -- of what they've promised. That souvenir, that rock will remind them that they've declared, they've chosen that day whom they would serve.

The souvenir rock. 

So here's a thing: As the Israelites have invaded the Promised Land, the Lord has cleared the path for them, and in significant places, the nation has left "testimony rocks," memorials or souvenirs to remind themselves of who they are and of Whom they've chosen. 

With the setting up of this rock, there are now seven reminder memorials (1: Joshua 4:20, 2: Joshua 7:26, 3: Joshua 8:29, 4: Joshua 8:32, 5: Joshua 10:27, 6: Joshua 22:27, and 7: Joshua 24:26), the number of completion. The work is done. It is finished.

Here's the thing: The Lord cleared the territory for His people. "It was the Lord our God Himself Who brought us and our fathers up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. And the Lord drove out before us all the nations..." (Joshua 24:17-18).

They could say: "It is finished," because of the Lord their God. 

Jesus, significantly, said, "It is finished" on the cross in John 19:30 when He waged war on sin and the enemy who had brought it. He fought, and won, and in the process, went before us and delivered us from our own place of slavery to sin, once and for all. We are free because Jesus finished the battle in our place.

So we come to the point: At this moment in time, if you are on a crossroads, trying to choose a direction, look at the example set by Joshua, the strong leader -- both of his family and of the nation of Israel. "But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord."

Set up your testimony rock, your souvenir of your choice, so that when the hard times roll in (and I'm not going to sugarcoat it; hard times will roll in), you remember the day you met the One Who finished the work already. And choose Him again. Every day. 

Every time the enemy lays a crossroads at your feet, check your souvenir rock and choose to serve the Lord, Who goes before you.