This year’s Memorial Day weekend found me trekking the streets of Washington DC with my wife and children. I appreciate and value history. The victories won, lessons learned, and progress made are all areas of great interest and value. As I pondered the honor bestowed on those who fought to create this great nation, I couldn’t help but also think of those who died to establish the Christian faith.
Right in the middle of Washington DC is a monument you cannot miss – the Washington monument. It stands pointing to the sky as if to say ‘the sky is the limit’. It is a centerpiece of the nation’s capital, surrounded by all the important government buildings, including the White House on one side. On another side is the nation’s capital, the grandest symbol of democracy and peaceful political discourse. On another side is the Lincoln memorial, probably my favorite. He sits on a grand throne, larger than life, and his words and deeds still influence the nation to this day. Interspersed in between the major memorials are the World War 2, Vietnam, and Korean war memorials among others. A grand and fitting honor to well deserving men and women. I am always in awe when I visit the nation’s capital and I can never have enough.
While on the trek, we ran into a small tent nestled between the Capitol and the Washington memorial where there was a church meeting in a tent. The church was appropriately called “David’s Tent” and they had a full blown, spirit filled meeting right at the intersection of man’s history and man’s fate. David’s tent…the place where, in the Old Testament, the glory of God dwelt. On one side the endless political bickering threatens to drown out the voice and presence of God and on the other side the history of man’s accomplishments threatens to overshadow the God who made it all possible. Right in the middle sits the place where the glory of God dwells. I thought to myself, this must be the most important patch of ground in this area. This made my day!
Back to my discourse…
The bible talks about memorial stones laid by the children of Israel to commemorate significant events. The most significant being when Jacob lays a stone to remember where he met with God (Genesis 32) and when Joshua, following God’s command, instructs each tribe to pick a memorial stone from the Jordan river and place it in their dwelling place after they cross the river (Joshua 4). Memorial stones were and still are a way of marking where we’ve been as well as honoring those who helped us achieve great things.
As we reflect on our lives here on earth, we all have memorial stones that represent areas of great achievement and accomplishment. We also have sore spots that are at times hard to carve into memorial stones. These I call the rocks in our lives. We then also carry pebbles that are disjointed areas needing to be molded together to form a memorial stone. From Martin Luther King Jr’s larger than life statue, to Thomas Jefferson’s statue hidden in the columns of the monument, to Ben Franklin’s statue outside of The Trump Hotel, we find that memorial stones are formed over a lifetime worth of work and achievements. They will either be carved out of the deformed rock we were or assembled from the many pebbles that represented who we were.
Many of the memorials I saw were built years after the person was gone. Sometimes we fail to recognize the impact we have on people’s lives until we’ve had time to gather the pebbles into well carved stones. Other times we fail to recognize the shape of the stone because the rock is too large and too deformed to make any sense. Jesus was seen that way when He walked the earth. His significance was not realized until He was gone and we collected all the pebbles that formed the stone; A stumbling block for some and a refuge for others. Peter was called ‘the rock’ by Jesus Himself but was carved into a memorial stone on which the church was built.
On the one end we carve a rock into a memorial stone and on the other we collect pebbles and connect them together to form the memorial stone. Whichever end you find yourself on, be diligent to be a memorial stone worthy of honor when it’s all said and done.
Nelson Masinde 