“Samuel took a single rock and set it upright between Mizpah and Shen. He named it “Ebenezer” (Rock of Help), saying, “This marks the place where God helped us.” 1 Samuel 7:12, The Message, by Eugene Peterson
Cairn |ke(ə)rn|
noun
1 a mound of rough stones built as a memorial or landmark, typically on a hilltop or skyline.
• a prehistoric burial mound made of stones.
Entry from New Oxford American Dictionary.
“Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I come. And I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home. Jesus sought me when a stranger wandering from the fold of God. He to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood.”
“Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” Originally composed by Robert Robinson.
When Samuel raised the Ebenezer, he was remembering the Lord’s deliverance of the Israelites from the hand of the Philistines. “Thus far has the Lord helped us,” it is translated in the TNIV. Originating in the Gaelic tradition, a cairn is similar to the Ebenezer. It is built as a memorial of one who has passed, an event, or a landmark showing the path. A cairn also signifies a remembering like the Ebenezer, where one commemorates an accomplishment and offers thanks by way of the physical symbol. In my recent summit of the highest point in New York State, Mt. Marcy, cairns were placed to show the path up the snowy pass above the tree line. Eyes fixed on the cairns, we were led to take the most direct path up the icy rock face.
We find ourselves in the season of Advent, where we remember the events surrounding the birth of Jesus. All of the stories, prophecies, and symbols of the season have been Ebenezers or cairns for 2000 plus years. They commemorate the immaculate birth and person of Jesus. They also remember the hardship surrounding this event: the shame Joseph had to work through that his 14-year-old fiancée was pregnant; Herod’s genocide of all boys Jesus’ age, therefore prompting Jesus’ parents to flee to Egypt for protection; and a stable filled with animal droppings is not the most comfortable or sanitary place to give birth to a child! Yet, as we celebrate this season, we raise an Ebenezer to remember God’s overcoming of these trials through the miraculous birth and life of Jesus.
ADVENT ACTION
As Advent prompts us to remember these events, it also prompts us to remember the happenings of the previous year of our lives. What are your cairns or Ebenezers from 2012? How have you been shaped through the events, celebratory or painful, or both? When did you feel joyful and content and when did you feel angry and despairing? Do you look back on these various events and emotional seasons with gratitude or regret? Why? How was your relationship with Jesus impacted or changed by these moments? Do you feel like you made strives forward in that relationship, stayed in the same place, or fell backward?
We must take the time to answer these questions before we look ahead to the New Year. Answering these questions is placing a metaphorical cairn in our memory to remind us of the happenings of 2012. And maybe it would be beneficial for you to gather rocks from your yard and build a physical cairn and scratch 2012 into it. Whether or not you’ve come to a place of resolve with these things and their impact on your life, this cairn will remind you of the event’s significance in who you were, are, and are becoming. You can then go back to it when you face a similar moment in the future and be reminded of what happened in the past. Through this process of invoking the good and the ugly of this last year, I would hope you then can honestly sing the song mentioned earlier: “Here I raise my Ebenezer, hither by thy help I come. And I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home. Jesus sought me when a stranger wandering from the fold of God. He to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood.”
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