Lent 23

"Here I raise mine Ebenezer; hither by thy help I'm come; and I hope by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home." Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing is one of my favorite hymns. Have you ever wondered what that means--here I raise mine Ebenezer? I thought about it's meaning tonight while browsing the Letterboxing in America site. A friend of mine in Atlanta told me about letterboxing this weekend and sent me a whole list of letterboxes for me to search for right here in Greenwood. What is letterboxing, you may ask?

From letterboxing.org:

Letterboxing is an intriguing mix of treasure hunting, art, navigation, and exploring interesting, scenic, and sometimes remote places. It takes the ancient custom of placing a rock on a cairn upon reaching the summit of a mountain to an artform. It started when a gentleman simply left his calling card in a bottle by a remote pool on the moors of Dartmoor, in England.

Here's the basic idea: Someone hides a waterproof box somewhere (in a beautiful, interesting, or remote location) containing at least a logbook and a carved rubber stamp, and perhaps other goodies. The hider then usually writes directions to the box (called "clues" or "the map"), which can be straightforward, cryptic, or any degree in between. Often the clues involve map coordinates or compass bearings from landmarks, but they don't have to. Selecting a location and writing the clues is one aspect of the art.

Once the clues are written, hunters in possession of the clues attempt to find the box. In addition to the clue and any maps or tools needed to solve it, the hunter should carry at least a pencil, his personal rubber stamp, an inkpad, and his personal logbook. When the hunter successfully deciphers the clue and finds the box, he stamps the logbook in the box with his personal stamp, and stamps his personal logbook with the box's stamp. The box's logbook keeps a record of all its visitors, and the hunters keep a record of all the boxes they have found, in their personal logbooks.

Letterboxing reminded me of the biblical Ebenezer. Ebenezer, in its scriptural context, means "stone of help." After battling the Philistines with God's help, Samuel erects a memorial stone (1Sam. 7:12) as a symbol of God's help. He was basically saying, "The Lord has brought us safely this far." Where are those Ebenezers in your life that you thought to stop and think, God has brought me this far? I have to admit that I have not done a very good job of stopping and setting those benchmarks for myself. It's so easy to get lulled into the rhythm of life and forget that we're not doing this alone. We stop and think about God's movement in our lives when we need God or when something "out of the ordinary" happens. I'm going to try to be better at that, recognizing that every step is with God's help. Maybe as I search all over town for these letterboxes that's the message I'll stamp in the logbook. Here I raise my Ebenezer.