Altars Today

In our service last night we talked about the altar that was build after Joshua led the people through the Jordan. We used stones to build and altar of our own and shared different stories of faith that we had. What I wanted to focus for a minute on this morning was more on the concept of altars in our society today. In the early days of our faith, altars were things of stability amidst a mobile population. Today the population is far more sedentary, but I would be curious how spread around our altars would still be. Looking at my life, and thinking about where I would have built altars, I would see them existing in several states and in several locations within a given state, assuming I use altars to commemorate important religious events in my life.

Another thing that altars do is to give us a talking point, something we can point to and use to talk about our faith. When people see the pile of rocks they ask why it is there, we can then say what it represents, why it is important. We have new talking points, new piles of rocks in our lives. Some of us where crosses around our necks, or place them in our homes. Others have artifacts we carry with us from our travels, some obvious, such as maybe a replica of the Eiffel Tower, other far more subtle, a shell collect on Omaha beach in Normandy.

So here is the question to ponder, where would you have built altars in your life? What "stone piles" do you have to point to and talk about when it comes to your faith? What can you do to make new ones?