Thus Far

Transcript

Hello, my friend… welcome to another day. This is By God's Call — day 81, Thus Far.

"Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen and called its name Ebenezer; for he said, 'Till now the LORD has helped us.'" 1 Samuel 7:12.

Stop, breathe, and take in this scene slowly.

Israel had just come out of a terrible season. The ark of the covenant — the most sacred symbol of God's presence among the people — had been captured by the Philistines. It was humiliation, it was mourning, it was twenty years of grief. And now, after the people's repentance, after Samuel prayed and cried out for them, God gave the victory. The Philistines were defeated. And what does Samuel do at the moment of victory? He doesn't give a speech. He doesn't throw a party. He picks up a stone — an ordinary stone off the ground — and plants it there, between Mizpah and Shen, and gives it a name: Ebenezer. "Stone of help." And he says the line that still echoes today: "Till now the LORD has helped us."

Notice carefully what that sentence does not say. It doesn't say "everything is settled forever now." It makes no promise about tomorrow. It is an utterly honest sentence, anchored in the present: thus far, up to this exact point on the road, God has helped. That's all it claims. And that's enough. Because faithful memory doesn't need to guarantee the future — it only needs to tell the truth about the past.

And that stone stood right in the middle of a turning point. On one side, the defeat, the lost ark, the shame. On the other, the victory God had just given. The stone marked the hinge — the exact point where mourning turned into deliverance. That's why it had to stand there, visible, permanent. Because every time someone from Israel walked that road again, before fear got the chance to speak, the stone would already be there, speaking first: "thus far He helped."

My friend, you have your own Ebenezers. That moment you didn't know how you'd pay the bill, and you paid it. That diagnosis that looked like the end, and wasn't. That conversation you were certain would wreck the relationship, and somehow brought healing instead. You have stones scattered along your path — it's just that most of them never got a name. They stayed loose, forgotten, unmarked. And that's why, when the next hard thing shows up, it feels like the first time God has ever been tested. It feels like you've never seen Him move before.

Samuel understood something we forget easily: gratitude that isn't recorded evaporates. It becomes a one-day feeling. But gratitude that gets a name, that gets a stone, that gets a fixed place in memory — that stands. That becomes a defense for the next hard day.

So here is today's call: raise your own stone. It doesn't have to be literal — it can be a line in a notebook, a note on your phone, a word written on paper stuck to the fridge. Write it starting with "thus far" and finish it with something specific, real, nameable: thus far the Lord has sustained me in this job. Thus far He has cared for my family. Thus far He has not left me alone. And keep that Ebenezer where you'll see it again — because the day is coming when you'll need it to speak first, before the fear does.

God has helped thus far. And He hasn't stopped being who He is. Stay close to Him. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.