“And Joshua said unto all the people, Behold, this stone shall be a witness unto us; for it hath heard all the words of the LORD which he spake unto us: it shall be therefore a witness unto you, lest ye deny your God.” — Joshua 24:27
Not long ago, I found myself back in my hometown. While we were visiting, I stopped by the EMS base where I had spent so many years of my life. Everything had changed. New buildings. New ambulances. New faces. Standing there I went back. Call by call, moment by moment, experience by experience.
Some of those memories were difficult. Some were triumphant. Some were the kind that stay with you forever, regardless of how many years pass. All of them were real. And standing in that place and letting myself remember felt important in a way I did not fully expect.
Memory is a powerful thing.
The people of Israel understood this. Throughout the Old Testament, whenever God did something significant, like when He parted a sea, when He provided in the wilderness, or when He brought His people through something that had no natural explanation, they built something to remember it by. Altars were raised. Stones were stacked. Places were given names that told the story of what had happened there. All of it served the same purpose. So that when someone asked what these stones meant, the answer would be ready. God showed up here. God did this. We were here, and He came through.
Joshua’s stone was a witness. A physical marker that said something happened in this place between us and God, and we refuse to let it be forgotten.
The altar of remembrance is built on a truth that is both simple and sobering. We forget. Not intentionally. Not maliciously. But the human heart has a remarkable capacity to lose sight of what God has done the moment a new difficulty arrives. The Israelites who walked through the Red Sea on dry ground were the same people who complained about water three days later. The miracle they had witnessed did not automatically carry them through the next crisis. The memory of it had to be cultivated. The stones had to be intentionally stacked.
We are not so different.
There are moments in every believer’s life where God has shown up undeniably. Prayers answered in ways that left no room for coincidence. Provision that arrived when there was no natural explanation for it. Doors that opened. Burdens that lifted. Seasons that turned. Moments where we stood in the aftermath and said that was God. There is no other explanation.
The altar of remembrance asks us to go back to those moments and stack the stones. To write them down. To speak them aloud. To return to the places, physical or otherwise, where God proved Himself faithful and refuse to let the memory fade.
Because every moment of past faithfulness is evidence for present trust. When the new difficulty arrives, the stones we have stacked become the foundation we stand on. He came through then. He will come through now. The altar of remembrance is not about living in the past. It is about drawing strength from it.
Standing at that EMS base, I was not just remembering calls and colleagues. I was remembering a season of my life when God was present, shaping me, preparing me for things I could not yet see. The new buildings did not erase what happened there. And the new moments of life do not erase what God did in the old ones.
Stack your stones. Build your altar. What God has done deserves to be remembered. And what He has done before is the surest evidence of what He will do next.
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