Ebenezer, A Rock, A New Story

“Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, …” 1 Samuel 7:1

I recently was at a baptism in a beautiful church that surrounded me with 13 stained glass windows. Some of the different windows displayed Jesus’ birth or the nativity scene, teaching in the temple as a twelve-year-old, Jesus’ baptism, His receiving the little children, Jesus praying in the garden, Jesus’ trial, His Passion, carrying His cross, the empty tomb, the parable about the ten virgins and His Ascension were depicted.

Photo free from Pixabay.

One of the windows displayed a scene that I had never seen before. It was of a woman clinging to a stone or rock during a storm, the ocean waters were raging around her. I asked the Priest there what the window scene was depicting. He said “Ebenezer!” When I heard the name Ebenezer I immediately thought of Ebenezer Scrooge the fictional character in the famous book “Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. I figured that was not correct. I researched the name and found out Ebenezer is mentioned three times in the Old Testament in 1 Samuel. The stained glass window was depicting the meaning of Ebenezer.

Ebenezer means in Hebrew “stone of help”. Ebenezer was also the name of two different sites or locations in Palestine. When the Israelites won a battle over the Philistines, Samuel, the…