Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
(Robert Robinson, 1758; “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”; appeared in his A Collection of Hymns Used by the Church of Christ in Angel Alley, Bishopgate, 1759.)
As many times as I’ve sung that hymn in my life, it never meant more to me than when I fully understood the biblical allusion the composer uses. What’s an Ebenezer, and how does one raise theirs?
In 1 Samuel 7, after God “thundered with loud thunder against the Philistines” (v. 10), Samuel “took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, ‘Thus far has the LORD helped us’ ” (v. 12, NIV). The word Ebenezer comes from two Hebrew words: ebhen “stone” + ezar “help.” (“ebenezer.” Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. 16 Feb. 2012. Dictionary.com.) Samuel commemorated God’s mighty rescue of Israel with a “stone of help,” a marker of His faithfulness to His people.
A few years ago at our church’s women’s retreat, our take-away souvenir was an Ebenezer stone. We wrote on our stones ways God had met our needs in our lives to that point in time. I still have my Ebenezer stone, with words recounting God’s blessings to me, ways He met specific requests in my life.
These days, I find myself mining my journals for Ebenezers. Each entry I post on the Chosen Families blog is an Ebenezer of sorts, a “God’s brought me this far” reminder to myself. This journey with hidden disabilities isn’t easy, but God is faithful to us–and to our daughter–each step of the way.
As I raise my Ebenezers by jotting down those moments of grace He gives us, I am leaving a record of God’s story in Cami’s life. You may not be a blogger or a journaler. You may be a scrapbooker, or a photographer, or a collector. However you do it, create some Ebenezers–markers of God’s faithfulness to you and your family in your journey with hidden disabilities. Someday, you’ll raise them high and declare, “Look how far God has brought us.”
Letting Him tune my heart to sing His grace,
Cassandra
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