Etched in Stone

Yesterday I noticed something that I walk past everyday without paying much attention to.  Like many people do, when we poured the slab for our driveway on August 15, 2002, we had our kids put their handprints, their footprints, and their names into the wet concrete.  Fourteen years later I look at those inscriptions and think about the multitudes of changes that have taken place since then.  Laura has now graduated from college and is teaching third grade at a school.  Russ is a senior at LSU.  Benjamin is now driving!

Etched in Stone

Similar to marking heights with a yardstick and putting dates on the wall as kids grow, marking things in concrete is a way of preserving an event in time and saving it for later.  Times change, we grow up, we have experiences - both good and bad that shape us and mold us, but a reminder of that little 9 year old girl who excitedly put her hands in the concrete is there when I walk out the garage door.

Laura Lee

So is that little 7 year old boy with a big smile and full of happiness, always clowning around.

And so is that little 1 1/2 year old Benjamin who was squirming around so much you can't really tell that the marks are handprints and footprints at all!

We've been doing this for thousands of years.  Yahweh inscribed the 10 commandments in stone and gave them to Moses atop Mount Sinai.  Egyptians carved intricate hieroglyphics in stone.  When we want to honor great figures in history, we carve memorials in stone either etching their names or their likenesses so that we can remember them.

But regardless of the permanence of stone etchings, nothing beats looking at or spending time with the real thing!

Great faces.  Great places.