What Do These Stones Mean?

After Lent and Easter we are returning to our trip through the Bible with today’s readings from Joshua and Judges. The Joshua passage tells of the people crossing the Jordan into the Promised Land and the instruction to pick a man from each tribe to go back into the river and take a stone to set up to remind people of that day and journey. Stories in Joshua and Judges are often about battles to conquer peoples and territories in Canaan, not the most pleasant of Israel’s stories. But, as the stones remind them, those stories must be told. Any single story is incomplete, and stories in the book of Judges show the people wandering off course and from God because they had not remembered those stories told in Joshua. We must remember to tell all parts of our own stories so we can remember the mistakes and maintain a course with the love of God.