Building the Right Altars

Building the Right Altars


David built an altar there to the Lord and sacrificed burnt offerings and peace offerings. And the Lord answered his prayer for the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped.
2 Samuel 24:25 NEW LIVING TRANSLATION


Have you ever noticed what altars were used for in the Old Testament? They were used for sacrifices and ceremonies mostly. But they were also used as a means of remembrance. In many churches, the Communion meal is served from an Altar of Remembrance. We do that to remember what Jesus did for us on the cross. Jacob remembered the Lord when he saw a vision of a ladder. Altars were built to remember a significant moment in history or in a person’s life. When I look back on my own life, I have not always built altars for the right reasons. No, I didn’t stack a bunch of rocks together and say a prayer. I mean that I built altars of remembrance in my heart. They were built when I chose to remember the wrong things so vehemently. For example, I regularly build altars for my failures. I build them for my sins.

I know of a person that built an altar of remembrance for her deceased husband. Every year for the last 10 years she slips into a depressed state at the anniversary of his death. She has chosen to build the wrong altar, the wrong reverent remembrance in her heart. She should miss her husband, but she has built her life around the moment of separation, instead of happy times like the day they met, or their wedding anniversary, or the birth of their first child. Others I know have built more than an altar, they have built monuments, to their alcoholic parents, to the pedophile stepfather, to illness that they think is their own fault, to the hurtful words they keep replaying in their heads, to the moments they failed others and to the moments others have failed them.

Do you think your life would be different if you tore down those altars of failure and built altars of praise? Maybe we can ask God to swap a praise moment for every failure moment? Then we can choose to build the right altars; the kind of altars that lead to an abundant life.