Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 70 · March 11
One Generation
“And also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers: and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel.”
Joshua's grave lies on the north side of the hill Gaash, in mount Ephraim. Within one lifetime of his funeral, the nation he led had forgotten why he mattered.
Early in Judges, Joshua is buried, and then the book reports the collapse in one sentence: "there arose another generation after them, which knew not the LORD, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel." Two things were lost, and the order is worth noticing. They did not know the Lord Himself, and they did not know what He had done. Those works had been public events. A river stopped flowing. A city's walls fell. Twelve stones were set up at Gilgal so that one day a child would ask his father about them, and somebody would be there to tell him: "When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones?"
Now set that beside a house on your street, though the two are not the same size of problem. Israel lost the memory of a whole nation within one lifetime, while the stones were still standing in the field. What goes missing in a family today is quieter. It is the year the money ran out and help arrived. It is the illness, and how you came through it. It is the answer to prayer nobody has mentioned since. Those are your stones, and so far they are stacked nowhere.
Judges does not blame the parents by name. It simply records the gap, and that is harder to sit with than a scolding would be, because the generation that ruined the country is described first by what it did not know. The good news is that the Lord's works have not stopped, and neither has He. Every one of your stones is a true story about Him, and telling it is how the next generation comes to know Him.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 70 is Already Blessed (Ephesians 1:3).