Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 28 · January 28
What Mean These Stones
“That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones?”
Twelve wet stones lie in a heap at Gilgal. Twelve men carried them up out of the riverbed on their shoulders, one man from each tribe.
That heap is the whole monument. The text mentions no inscription, no name and no date, and no carving of the priests standing in the river with the ark.
The plan for the stones is given before they are even lifted: "That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones?"
So the memorial is built in a way that cannot explain itself. It only works when a child asks and a parent answers, and the answer is even written out for them: "Israel came over this Jordan on dry land." The stones do not store the story. They start a conversation, and when the conversation stops, the pile becomes just part of the scenery.
The reason given reaches far beyond one family: "That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the LORD, that it is mighty." Twelve rocks in a field were meant to speak to the whole world.
Our own memorials work the other way round. The phone that takes a photograph adds the date and the place by itself. The picture explains itself, so it never needs a person to tell its story, and no child has to ask. We have solved the problem of storing memories and lost the question that kept them alive.
The warning comes from Gilgal itself. Centuries later, Amos tells Israel, with bitter irony, to come to Gilgal and "multiply transgression," and Hosea tells Judah, "come not ye unto Gilgal." The place where God's mighty hand was remembered had become a place of false worship. When nobody explains a monument any more, it does not stay silent. Whoever holds the field gives it a new meaning.
So tell the story. The God who dried up the Jordan has not changed, and the next child who asks deserves to hear what His hand has done.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 28 is More Than (Romans 8:37).