The Ebenezer. The stone of help. I Samuel 7:12 says this:
The memorial stone was set in place by Samuel to commemorate God's miraculous providence on behalf of Israel in their battle with the Philistines.
Earlier in Israel's history, Joshua took twelve stones from the riverbed of the Jordan River as the Israelites crossed into the Promised Land. The Jordan had parted, allowing the Israelites to pass over on dry land as the upstream waters "rose in a heap". (Joshua 3:16) Once all were clear the waters path, the flow resumed and Joshua built a memorial with the twelve stones somewhere near Gilgal as a testament to future generations of God's miracle. Some Biblical scholars refer to these stones as an Ebenezer as well.
Not too long ago the day arrived that marked 71 years of my walking this earth. Clearly, the number 71 is far from extraordinary and when splitting those 71 years into days the calculation returns 25,932 - a fair number but not exactly earth shaking. However, continuing the exercise, 25,932 days are comprised of 622,368 hours which in turn embodies 37,342,080 minutes and a successive attempt at figuring leaves us with those 71 years being comprised of 2,240,524,800 seconds. I might have guessed a number in the millions but billions with a "b"? There is a bit of a "wow" factor there.
Humor me now....we're getting to the point although we need to touch upon a sliver of human physiology for just a second.
The normal, adult human heart weighs a mere 10-12 ounces....not even a pound of flesh. Yet, this tiny organ within each of our chests beats approximately 72 times per minute with enough power to thrust life giving blood to every cell in our body. Again, assuming the average. So, here I am, the very definition of average, and one final computation tells me that my heart has pulsed somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,688,797,520 times during my all too fleeting span of life.
Now, the commonality of 2.6 billion plus heartbeats throughout the populace precludes me from pronouncing this accumulation of pulsations to be a miracle....but it does strike me as being somewhat miraculous. Indeed, the marvel of life veiled in the earthly everyday.
Just as those individual heartbeats are all too often taken for granted, so too the beauty hiding in plain sight outside our back door goes unappreciated. And equally, as we tend to notice our hearts the most when that forever reliable lub-dub elects to lub minus the dub, perhaps the greater gift of travel is in the heightened awareness of blessings right here at home.
My "birthday" found Jamie and me walking aboard the Anacortes ferry to spend the day in Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands. A day trip that we've talked about for years but have neglected to do as this thing called "life" persisted in getting in the way. Nevertheless, the junket ensued on this day. A brief outing seated in splendor and afforded by roughly 33,000 muted beats of the heart.
The ancient Israelites memorialized God's miracles with the most permanent objects they could find, i.e. the stones. In like manner, I now leave a memorial in the most enduring medium available to me - a smattering of photos posted to this blog via the cloud. A commemoration not to some sort of earthly milestone but to the countless heartbeats that have brought me to this place. Each and every one a very real miracle of God.
An Ebenezer
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| Traffic jam at Lopez |
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| The harbor of Friday Harbor |
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| The miracle of life in a different form |
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| Smoked salmon and grilled asparagus on a deck with a view |
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| Towards Mount Baker and home |
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| The way we were |
