MEMORIES, LIKE THE CORNERS OF MY MIND.

1 Samuel 7: 3 – 12

As we go through this life, we somehow end up collecting things. Things like trophies and ribbons from competitions, souvenirs,coins, rocks, just about anything that can remind us of our accomplishments, places we have been, and the way other people effected our lives.
I have a little leather bag with a set of poker chips, and brass coins. These are for lengths of time of sobriety. Everything from day one to 10 years. As I look at each coin and chip, I can remember what it was like the day I earned it. I can look at pictures for the same thing, and I have this cheap balsa wood flamingo that reminds me of the vacation my wife and I took, and of the night and day we spent on South Beach in Miami.
In 1876, the Sioux leader Crazy Horse joined forces with Sitting Bull to defeat General Custer and his army at Little Bighorn. Not much later, though, starvation caused Crazy Horse to surrender to US troops. He was killed while trying to escape. Despite this sad conclusion to his life, he became a symbol of heroic leadership of a threatened people.
Today in the Black Hills of South Dakota, he is commemorated with a monument being carved into a mountain—the Crazy Horse Memorial. When complete, it will be 641 feet long and 563 feet high. It will show Crazy Horse riding a galloping horse, pointing the way to his people. (ODB)
The prophet Samuel made a memorial, a reminder, to the Jewish people of the great victory they had over the Philistines at Mizpah. It wasn't some enormous statue, it was a simple stone, an Ebeneezer, set there at the site of the battle so that generation after generation would know that God won the battle that happened on that day.

7 When the Philistines heard that Israel had assembled at Mizpah, the rulers of the Philistines came up to attack them. And when the Israelites heard of it, they were afraid because of the Philistines.
8 They said to Samuel, "Do not stop crying out to the LORD our God for us, that he may rescue us from the hand of the Philistines."
11 The men of Israel rushed out of Mizpah and pursued the Philistines, slaughtering them along the way to a point below Beth Car.
12 Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, "Thus far has the LORD helped us."

We should all have reminders of the battles that God has won for us. Little bits and bobs that mean nothing to other people, that we can show to our sons and daughters and tell them stories of great victories we have had. That way from generation to generation God will be remembered for what He did for us.