Joshua Box

Every Memorial Sunday our church celebrates what we call "Joshua Box" Sunday. The majority of our congregation has in their home a Joshua box, which is basically any kind of box, be it decorative or a fancy shoe box and inside this box holds memorable items of the things the Lord has done in our lives and in our family's lives.

This is taken from the book of Joshua, before right before they cross the Jordan River and are about to enter into the promise land through the fallen walls of Jericho.

“Cross over before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan, and each one of you take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel, that this may be a sign among you when your children ask in time to come, saying, ‘What do these stones mean to you?’ Then you shall answer them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord; when it crossed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. And these stones shall be for a memorial to the children of Israel forever.” Joshua 4

Our Joshua box sits in our living room and inside it has a few memorable items that show God's grace, love, mercy and protection.

Inside we have a few pictures of our house being built, my ID from when I taught High School and my husband's liscensing certificates.

We keep these items together because they all sort of occurred around the same time.

We were to be married in August of '03.

We knew that we did not want to move into an apartment and my husband, the frugal and wise financial person that he is had been saving money for a home for some years. We were driving around all over town looking for a home to purchase or build. For some crazy reason we ended up a little farther than we had anticipated, but nonetheless, a neighborhood had just gone up and the prices were low, the homes were perfect for first time buyers and we prayed, sought counsel and went on to purchase the house. By the way, we bought when the interest rates just happened to be at their lowest ever.

It was a leap of faith because I did not have a job yet, I was in the process of finding a teaching position. I had a few interviews but nothing had come out of them.

The house was going to be finished the week before we married.
It was late July and I still did not have a job. I had applied to every school district in the area. Nothing.

Then out of the blue, on the 29th of July, about 2 weeks before school starts, I get a call for a teaching position at a school I had never heard of. I interview and the next day they offer me the job. I learned that out of almost 1000 applicants, they offered a 22 year old, fresh out of college this position.

The funny part of it is that I don't even remember applying. Like I said, I applied to every district, some an hour's drive away, literally. And this school was about 25 minutes from our new home.

The house was built. We were getting married on Saturday, we signed on Thursday, moved in Thursday night. We spent our first night as husband and wife in our new home.

A few months later, my husband was given the oppurtunity to get his liscences and moved positions and locations to a location about 15 minutes away from our new home. He had currently been in the area we thought we would live in.

2 years later we got our of our comfort zone and began scoping out churches in the area. We found the greatest church in the world, fell in love with the people and have formed the most wonderful relationships. Our church is 5 minutes away from our house.

We never thought we would wind up so far from where we were first looking for homes, but God positioned us here. He knew so much more than we did. He blessed us so much more than we ever would have imagined.

In the next few days as we begin our memorial day weekend, I will be sharing with you more contents from our box and what God has done for my family. And, I would encourage you to begin one in your family so that one day your children may look into the box and ask what is this for and you can share with them the goodness of God.