The Holy in the Common
The Holy in the Common
Joshua 8:30-31a, 32 At that time Joshua built an altar to the LORD, the God of Israel, on Mount Ebal, …“an altar of uncut stones, upon which no man has wielded an iron tool.” … And there, in the presence of the people of Israel, he wrote on the stones a copy of the law of Moses, which he had written.
There’s a mountain somewhere near the Jordan River, or a knobby hill, or perhaps a spot in the bed of a creek that winds its way through the valley, where the erosive hands of time have buried precious stones that once heralded the very words of God. Perhaps generations of rushing rains and torrents have long washed away the ink. Perhaps earthquakes have swallowed the stones into the hidden vault of earth. Perhaps the forces of changing seasons have chipped away the sediment, erasing their sacred script, eradicating their holy and exalted signatures. Perhaps these ancient rocks are just sands now, scattered all throughout the Canaanite hills, trampled upon by woodland squirrels and wild horses and pilgrim bands alike, such that these stones that once stood exalted over all the earth are now as of the earth as it gets.
But God does not forget such things as men do. Dust that has born the signature of His life-giving breath, dust that has been called out and distinguished by His everlasting words, dust that has served as a sacred and hallowed memorial to His presence, doesn’t merely get swallowed back to dust once more. What God marks as ‘sacred’ can’t become common once again. The world may forget the wonder of stones like these—and I’m speaking poetically of Christians, friend. Religious zealots may lose their whereabouts and stop making shrines to them. But they effectively remain pillars in the kingdom forevermore! They don’t cease to be special when they’re shattered and scattered in a trillion different directions. Come, death, do your decomposition work! God will do the resurrecting!
Oh praise the LORD for sacred words that never fail! And praise the LORD for saints like Joshua who took the time to copy them onto stone and parchment! And praise the LORD for the missionaries who suffered to translate them into our tongue! Yes, but praise the LORD most of all for writing them on the most common, unworthy, of-the-earth tablets of all: our very hearts!