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In Genesis 12, God sends Abram from his homeland on a journey into Canaan. Along the way, when Abram stops to make camp, he builds an altar to God. Abram does this more than once. Every time he pauses to rest along his journey, Abram builds an altar to God.
Abram didn’t have a church for Sunday worship. Instead, he built that place for himself, for his people and for God. Abram acknowledged God’s presence, not just one day of the week, but every time he paused along the journey.
I look forward to attending worship with my congregation Sunday mornings. And yet there is also complacency in my worship. I compartmentalize my acknowledgment of God into one hour a week. Often despite my best intentions, God is overshadowed by the busyness and distractions of my Monday through Saturday life – the rush of soccer practice and orchestra concerts and deadlines and dog walking and laundry.
I thought about a recent walk in the park – the light, the stillness, the man under the tree, the meadowlark trilling. And I thought about Abram, stopping to build altars along the journey, not once in a while, but every day.
This message is excerpted from “Stopping to build an altar” by Michelle Derusha in the October 2018 Gather magazine.