It sounds nice, doesn’t it? To be so disciplined that you set aside time throughout the day to pray and re-orient your walk of life to God’s. Time to confess, to remember the Promise, to be re-assured of God’s mercy, to give thanks, to offer forgiveness, and then to go on with the next leg of your day’s journey renewed in hope and the awareness of the Holy Spirit’s presence.
I try to do this. I try to wake up before everyone else to center myself in God’s Word (i.e. the Promise) and prepare myself to walk by the Spirit over the next few hours. I try to do the same in the middle of the day and again in the evening.
I try. Sometimes I do manage to actually sit down with the intention of building my altar to the Lord. And then I’m distracted. Either by what I’m reading (which often sends me on really interesting, but for my present purposes irrelevant, mental journeys), or by other people, thoughts, or tasks. Often the day will slip by before I realize I forgot to build my altar.
The first three chapters of the story of Abraham are structured around his altar-building enterprises. When he built his altars and called on the name of the Lord, his actions and thoughts reflected a man faithfully trying to walk the way of God by the Holy Spirit. When he didn’t, his thoughts and actions quickly turned away from the way of God to the way of human economy.
The discipline is needed. For the good of our souls and the clarity of our thoughts, we need to regularly build altars of confession, gratitude, and forgiveness along the journey’s of our days. But maybe it’s more about a way of looking at life than a particular devotional practice. All of life is sacred. We live every moment near the presence of our holy God. Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit into our souls in baptism. Maybe its about attitude. Developing the ability to see in each moment the presence of God; to discern in each moment our own missteps; and to find a reason to say thank you to the God in whom we live, move, and have our being at every moment of every day.
Oh yes. And forgiveness. Chances are, I’ll step out of this habit more often than I’ll stay in it. I bet you’re the same. At the altar we receive the good news that Jesus Christ forgives. He calls us to testify to this grace by forgiving others. That includes our own selves. When we walk out of the way of Jesus confess, remember God’s mercy, give thanks, and then walk on with a renewed orientation to Jesus’ way.