The second stanza of Robert Robinson’s great old hymn Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing starts with the words “Here I raise my Ebenezer” – lyrics that many of us have sung without understanding what they mean. The word Ebenezer is taken from today’s reading, from the story of how Samuel erected a memorial stone near Mizpah, giving it the name Ebenezer and saying, “Yahweh has helped us as far as this” (I Samuel 7:12).

Eben ezer (אֶבֶן עָזֶר) is literally “stone of help” – a stone set up to remind all those who pass by that it is by the help of God that we have been rescued and established as God’s own people. That’s a good thing to remember, just as a general principle: but what’s especially interesting is the context in which this took place.

The people of Israel had marched into battle against the Philistines, and had brought the Ark of the Covenant with them to guarantee their victory: they were sure that God would not let them lose if they had the Ark with them, for then the enemy would capture the Ark, and that would be unthinkable. When the Philistines realized that the Israelites had brought the Ark along with them, they were quite afraid; yet they exhorted themselves to fight with courage. As it turns out, the Philistines won the battle and did indeed capture the Ark (4:5-10): as a result, the people of Israel were forced once again to pay tribute to their enemies.

They would have to pay that tribute for the next twenty years, until they were able to defeat the Philistines and regain their freedom (7:2-10). So the recognition established by the Ebenezer – the Stone of Help that memorialized the truth that “the Lord has helped us” – came at the end of twenty long years of suffering. That’s a hard lesson. We want God to take care of all our problems very quickly. Actually, we’d prefer for God to take care to prevent the suffering as soon as it appears as a possibility in the distance, before we are actually suffering from it. We are not good at being patient and faithful as we wait confidently throughout the time of suffering – perhaps a couple of decades of suffering! – until the appointed day when God will choose to rescue us.

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You are the Lord! You are the one who helps us and sustains us, in every time of woe. We are not good at waiting, O God: but we seek your grace, to be strong and patient, trusting that you will hold us close in the midst of hard times, and that in the end you will bring us into the freedom of the children of God.