It is my opinion that this book is a beautiful reproof of how family distances themselves from one-another for one reason or another. An aunt or uncle can guide your soul to heaven or to hell. God sees and defends the fatherless, here on earth and throughout eternity. Family should draw one to God and not away, if possible.
It is my imagination of this book that when Uncle sent the boy, David up to his expected demise to fall down the rickety stairs. I always imagine him having nearly fallen, fainting out and going unconscious. I see him as Ezekiel falling into the valley of drybones and Fred Hammond singing I Press to his semiconscious soul and him seeing himself marching to heaven with the true souls of the redeemed who come together in his sight. He starts to see the difference between the life, his father had carved out for him, apart from the covetousness of his natural family condition. He sees that his job is not to receive from his uncle, but to give, the only thing that he had and could give, prayer for his dear uncle's lost soul.That poor uncle was truly the picture of the rich miser. He needed prayer and it is a question in my mind, why the name Ebenezer, seems always the contradiction of those days. The first reading was of the dear parson who gave the remembrance of a loved soul to a poor orphan. What did he give to the child? How was his remembrance always gifted to us? Chapter one we see that wonderful anticipation of living in great abundance with his rich distant family. His expectation is harshly dashed upon the rocks, as we will find out erlong. 1. Money- inheritance 2. Gifties gift money 3. the Bible 4. Medicinal Lily of the valley water-how to make infusion. Fear and second thoughts had come to him in chapter 2. He started to see the futility of his decision to attempt this change in his mean condition. Curses were upon that house. Curses were upon his distant family and he had not known of his mistake to pursue the mystery of family relations. {Perhaps the condition of the church in those days was thus. Perhaps there was no way to have money and holiness, for the deceptions of that day. Only the rich young ruler's proposal of our Lord's could draw a soul to heaven. I am sure that there must've been some rich who were saved, but RLS, warns us all of the deception of covetousness. Alexander, a Greek name and Ebenezer a Biblical name and they lived in antithesis of the expectation. Is the raising of my Ebenezer, the trusting of the law of Moses, which can never make the soul clean from your sins, only it can make you know that you are a sinner.} Will we either be part of the unity of the spirit in godly Alexander who pictured "Christian and pilgrim" in the Pilgrim's Progress or we will be part of the unsaved Ebenezer who holds to the reality of Moses and knows he is unsaved and happy to be thus.
Hither by Thy Help I'm come and I hope by thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home, Did Jesus seek us when a stranger? Were we wandering from the fold of God? Did He rescue Thee from Danger? or... Are you still in the Danger of that "Ebenezer"?