Remembering God’s Faithfulness

“Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” (1 Samuel 7:12)

 When my oldest daughter was born she was blue, which is okay for a Smurf but incredibly alarming for a newborn. Seconds after Maddie entered the world, doctors and nurses stampeded into the delivery room and huddled around my daughter. I’d barely caught a glimpse of her in the doctor’s hands, hadn’t gotten to hold her. All my body wanted to do was collapse, but even after nineteen hours of labor and delivery my senses were on high alert, heart racing, neck craning, ears straining, desperate to find out what was wrong.

Praise God, after a few minutes, which felt like fear-filled hours, the team suctioned our little girl’s lungs and cleared her airways. Then she let out a piercing scream, the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.

I’m grateful to say she’s been breathing fine ever since.

My husband and I were thankful to the medical team and to God above that Maddie was okay, but we don’t talk about it much anymore. She’s twenty. She’s a college athlete. And we’ve been through so many smiles and tears with her over the years that those opening measures of her life are sometimes forgotten. But I wonder what the cost is when I casually forget what God did for us in Maddie’s blue moment, that He gave her the gift of life, and us the gift of our daughter.

Our fourth child came out breathing just fine, but at his one-week checkup our pediatrician detected a hole in his itty-bitty heart. He was referred to the children’s hospital an hour away. We made arrangements for someone to watch our other three kids while we spent the day with pediatric cardiologists. They wrapped Maguire in a thick, warm blanket to lull him into a relaxed state and performed an ultrasound on his heart. Vivid greens, blues, and reds on the monitor indicated the whoosh of blood escaping the tiny hole in one of his ventricles.

The specialists told us Maguire had a structural heart problem that could either (a) develop as a “functional heart murmur,” without any symptoms, or (b) require heart surgery.

We had a follow-up in ten days. Ten days of trying to act like everything was normal, praying fervently, asking friends for prayers, trying not to freak out, freaking out anyway. My husband and I headed back to the hospital with Maguire. In pouring down rain, the kind you can barely see through. Miserable traffic. Stop. Start. Stop. Start.

I felt sick motion sickness. Sick from the thick, muggy scent of exhaust, or maybe sick from fear of what I might find out. We walked the same maze of hallways, endured again the deafening silence of elevators, the sterile scent clinging to the floors and walls, and another ultrasound.

Except this one revealed that the hole in Maguire’s heart had grown back together. Completely, miraculously gone.

God has performed two miracles before my eyes. He saved my children’s lives. Like real live Bible miracles. How did I ever lose sight of them?

How can we hold tight to all the ways God has provided for us?

Some of the folks in the Old Testament used rocks. Were they on to something?

In 1 Samuel 7 the nasty Philistine army advanced on the Israelites, ready to attack. But God spoke with a voice like thunder, totally disorienting the Philistines. In their confusion, the Israelites swept in and knocked them out, easy-peasy. This was major. God saved the Israelites, and they knew it.

The Israelite prophet Samuel did something that day to remember God and what He’d done. Samuel set up a monument. Nothing fancy, he just used what he had—a rock. The word the Israelites used for this kind of memorial was matzeveh—like a plaque or statue we’d erect today to mark a battle won, a hero buried, or a movement begun. Samuel took this large stone, set it upright, like a fin, and named the stone Ebenezer, “stone of help.”

This is the pulse of the hymn “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” written by Robert Robinson in 1758. It is a monument in song to what God has done for us, a way to remind us of how He has helped us and saved us in the past, to reset our wandering hearts so we won’t wander away from Him in the future: Here I raise my Ebenezer; here by Thy great help I’ve come.

This song is an Ebenezer for me.

Do you have some sort of Ebenezer in your life—something you have or do to remember God’s faithfulness?

• Maybe you journal and highlight answered prayers in hot pink.

• Maybe there’s a picture on your wall that reminds you of the home God provided or the moment you first met your spouse, and each time you see that photo you thank God for what He did.

• Perhaps you let your calendar prompt your praise—writing out gratitude lists near Thanksgiving; spending Advent meditating on hope, love, joy, peace, and faith; thanking God for freedom, and for the people who have fought for those rights, around the Fourth of July.

Or maybe you’re kind of random like me. Wanting to remember God and thank God for all the things on all the days, but yet sometimes forgetting His faithfulness. Still questioning if He’ll actually help one of my kids find the right college. Or asking what in the world we’ll do if my husband feels called to take that job he’s been offered across the country. I try to remember God, but I forget and instead try to take these things into my own hands, wasting time fretting about outcomes that might not ever take place.

But when I hear, “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” I remember. It resets me.

When was a time God did something amazing for you? Describe it.

—Adapted from How Sweet the Sound, written by Laura L. Smith. Used by permission of Our Daily Bread Publishing®, Grand Rapids MI. All rights reserved. Further distribution is prohibited without written permission from Our Daily Bread Publishing® at permissionsdept@odb.org