In between Magnalia’s 22-box community garden and the grounds of Narnia Cottage, there’s a (usually) dry creek. It’s comprised of river rock, quarried just a few miles from this place at the Vulcan Quarry.

At a recent prayer gathering for Magnalia community volunteers, organized by Buzz and Lee Gallien, Bill and Joann Goans and Dick and Donna Van Eerden, we consecrated that place as Ebenezer Creek.

The word Ebenezer means “stone of help.” The reference comes from I Samuel 7, and specifically verse 12:

“Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen, and called its name Ebenezer, saying, ‘Thus far the LORD has helped us.’”

After defeating the Philistines, Samuel raised his Ebenezer to declare that, in that place, God defeated the enemy. Thus, those grand and glorious words come to us, in the Old English of the King James:

“Hither by Thy help I come.”

Ebenezer Creek now includes stones taken from this place and written on by many pilgrims here, with glad remembrance of God’s protection, provision and multiplication — even in the midst of hardship.

So when you’re next here at the Homestead, please – go find your Ebenezer and use a marker in the Garden Shoppe and make note of grateful remembrance of God’s providence. Then place your stone of remembrance somewhere in Ebenezer Creek.

And then, thither by His help, you’ll go….

#ShoutoutSeptember