Fourth Sunday of Lent – Mar 30, 2025
Led by Joshua, successor to Moses, and following the Ark of the Covenant, the Israelites finally arrive at the banks of the Jordan. Forty years earlier, they also stood on a shoreline they needed to cross in order to begin the new life of freedom promised by God. But over the decades since, they had lost almost everyone who would have remembered how God had saved them at the Red Sea. Now at the Jordan, could they remember again?
As soon as the feet of the priests carrying the ark touch the river, the waters part, and the priests remain on that riverbed until all the people have made it safely across.
It is at rock bottom where we will find the reminders of God who has never left our side.
But before they too cross, Joshua instructs twelve men to each pick up a large stone from the river bottom and carry it to the place where they would later celebrate the Passover, which we read about today. Those twelve stones would serve as a memorial of how God had been faithful and saved his people when no one and nothing else could.
Like the Israelites on that muddy riverbed or the prodigal son amid the muck of swine, how often do we, too, need to hit rock bottom before we remember who truly saves us? Yet it is there where we will find the reminders of God who has never left our side.
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