Missing: 1 Picture

So I totally meant to take a picture of the altar my CPE group built today, but forgot. But it was a neat experience anyhoo, so I'm going to tell you about it.

Altar building is something I was introduced to not too long ago, but is something that I have found very meaningful. Altars have many different roles in many different religions, but the altar we built together today was an altar to mark a point along a journey. The whole notion of building an alter as a memorial marker comes from Joshua 4:1-9:

1When the whole nation had finished crossing the Jordan, the LORD said to Joshua, ² "Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, ³ and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan from right where the priests stood and to carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight."

⁴ So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, ⁵ and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, ⁶ to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' ⁷ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel forever."

⁸ So the Israelites did as Joshua commanded them. They took twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, as the LORD had told Joshua; and they carried them over with them to their camp, where they put them down. ⁹ Joshua set up the twelve stones that had been ^[a] in the middle of the Jordan at the spot where the priests who carried the ark of the covenant had stood. And they are there to this day.

In this passage we read about the nation of Israel building an altar to remember what had happened… the crossing of the river Jordan at the end of years of wandering in the dessert after being freed from the land of Egypt. They build the altar to remind themselves and those in the future of where they came from and what they had been through that brought them to that place. The alter is a landmark in the people of Israel’s journey, and today we built an alter to mark a point in our groups journey, where our paths intersect, and what has brought each of us to this place and all that we have learned about ourselves thus far in our journeys.

I also shared part of a poem with the group entitled The Journey Without Shortcuts by Melissa Wagner

The Journey traveled without shortcuts,
is a journey worth taking.
For there are no shortcuts,
to any place worth going.

The destination does not matter,
but the Journey to it does.
For at the destination,
you will not learn anything.

You will not accomplish much either.
On the Journey to it, however,
you learn many things,
and accomplish much.

On the Journey,
you learn. You learn that,
'We are not human beings on a spiritual journey,
but spiritual beings on a human journey.' (-my good friend Joe)

So travel hard,
and travel well.
Choose your companions wisely,
and leave everything behind.

Never look back,
always move forward.
For 'Yesterday is history,
and history is miles away.' (-Matthew West)

But never forget anything either,
learn all that you can,
and treasure the good times.
Then this Journey will be like no other.

This is the Journey,
of life.
Our life here on Earth,
so don't take shortcuts.

So again,
never look back,
but don't forget either,
and don't stop.

Don't take any shortcuts,
run the whole race.
You are not alone
on this Journey,
the Journey of life.

And then after we actually built our altar, we listened to the song Here By the Water by Steve Bell. It was a pretty cool time together!