A Time to Gather Stones by Rose McCormick Brandon

We will use these (twelve) stones to build a memorial. In the future your children will ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ Then you can tell them, ‘They remind us that the Jordan River stopped flowing when the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant went across.’ These stones will stand as a memorial among the people of Israel forever.” Joshua 4:6,7

The Israelites were nearing the Promised Land, nearing fulfilment of the promise given to Abraham centuries before. God stopped the flow of the Jordan River for them to pass over into the land. He instructed Joshua to gather twelve stones, one to represent each tribe, and create a monument that would stand as a reminder to future generations that God Himself made a way for His people to claim their inheritance.

Stone monuments dot the landscape of our country, including some on Parliament Hill engraved with scripture. Over the east window of the Peace Tower: He shall have dominion also from sea to sea (Psalm 72:8). The south window: Give the King thy judgement, O God, and thy righteousness unto the King's son (Psalm 72:1). The west window: Where there is no vision, the people perish (Proverbs 29:18). Other scriptures appear in the Memorial Chamber and on the bell. 

Gravestones fill our cemeteries. Some with telling words, like Fanny Crosby’s which bears the words of one of her famous hymns: Blessed assurance, Jesus is Mine. O what a foretaste of glory divine. 

Each of us must build a memorial. Something that testifies to future generations that Jesus Christ revealed Himself to us, that we experienced the miracle of salvation and were transformed by it. It need not be made of stone. One man left a letter to his grandchildren expressing his desire that each of them would love the Lord Jesus. Today, his great-great-grandchildren have copies of his letter. Meaningful words scribed with love near the end of his life when he was about to cross over into the Promised Land.

The time to gather stones is now. Stones of deeds done in the name of Christ. Stones of loving God and forgiving people, of being filled with the Spirit, reading and obeying His Word, prayer, encouraging others, living in peace, forgetting the past and moving forward, spreading the gospel, honouring Christ daily and finally, dying with His Name on our lips.

Think about the faith legacy you will leave. Will it be of stone? Wood? Words? Whatever it is make it meaningful.

Prayer: Father, guide me on this issue of leaving a faith legacy. Let it be something that will testify to future generations that I followed You.

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Rose McCormick Brandon is author of One Good Word Makes all the Difference and Promises of Home - Stories of Canada's British Home Children. Her articles and devotionals are published in many Christian magazines and in collections of inspiring stories like Chicken Soup for the Soul. She writes two blogs: Promises of Home and Listening to my Hair Grow. 

Fanny Crosby's November Experience by Rose McCormick Brandon

Fanny Crosby

Times of seeking God often precede a moment of revelation that transforms our lives. Blind poetess and prolific hymn writer, Fanny Crosby, had such an experience. Fanny had become the star of the first Institute for the Blind in New York City where she was educated and later taught. She recited her poetry before presidents and had her work published in newspapers and books.  One biographer wrote, “As Johann Strauss reigned in Vienna as the Waltz King and John Phillip Sousa in Washington as the March King, so Fanny Crosby reigned in New York in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century as the Hymn Queen.”

            Methodist class meetings, with their lively singing and warm atmosphere were attracting many New Yorkers who longed for more than religious formality. In 1850 Mr. Camp, Fanny’s friend and a science teacher at the Institute, invited her to attend special revival meetings at the Methodist Broadway Tabernacle on Thirtieth Street. Fanny declined. Then one night she had a vivid dream. “It seemed that the sky had been cloudy for a number of days and finally, someone came to me and said that Mr. Camp desired to see me at once. Then the clouds seemed to roll from my spirit and I awoke from the dream with a start.”

          After the dream, Fanny attended meetings with Camp every evening for several weeks. Services consisted of long emotional sermons, punctuated with loud amens and hallelujahs, tears of repentance and joyful outbursts, unlike anything Fanny had experienced in rural Connecticut where serious Calvinists worshipped in formal services.

          A feeling that a deeper life in God awaited her kept Fanny returning to the Methodist meetings. A few times she knelt with other God-seekers at the dirt-floor altar and prayed for hours but came away joyless and empty. Until November 20, 1850. “On that night it seemed to me light must come then or never.” At the invitation for prayer, Fanny walked to the altar and again knelt and prayed fervently for a spiritual breakthrough. When she was about to give up, the congregation sang Isaac Watts’ hymn “Alas and Did My Savior Bleed.” When Fanny heard the words of the final verse, “Dear Lord I give myself away, ‘tis all that I can do,” she jumped to her feet and shouted Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Of that night she said, “My very soul was flooded with celestial light. For the first time I realized I had been holding the world in one hand and the Lord in the other.”

         Bernard Ruffin writes in his biography of Fanny – “although there were no dramatic changes in her life and she soon realized it did not solve all her spiritual problems, her November experience as she called it, marked the beginning of a deeper Christian life and a total dedication of her life to God.” 

          Fanny’s hymn portfolio increased to 9,000. Many, like At the Cross Where I First Saw the Light allude to her November 1850 experience.  Her reputation as a happy, contented Christian lasted until she died at age 95. She didn’t seek pity for her blindness but often said, "When I get to heaven the first face that shall ever gladden my sight will be that of my Savior!" Generations have grown up on Fanny’s hymns and congregations still sing Near the Cross, Tell Me the Story of Jesus, Praise Him Praise Him, I am Thine O Lord, Close to Thee and hundreds of others. Her gravestone in Bridgeport, Connecticut is inscribed with two lines from one of her best known hymns  –

“Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine

Oh what a foretaste of glory Divine.”

            Experiences like Fanny’s ignite a passion for Christ in our hearts that forever changes us.

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Rose McCormick Brandon is the author of Promises of Home - Stories of Canada's British Home Children, One Good Word Makes all the Difference and numerous magazine articles. She writes two blogs, Promises of Home and Listening to my Hair Grow. Contact her at: rosembrandon@yahoo.ca