CHAPTER 40
Genesis 35:1 God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.”
The LORD then showed me a heap of stones that reminded me of the stone fireplace my grandfather had built with my father and uncle when they were boy scouts; however these stones were as tall as a man standing on the ground beside it.
As I looked closer it looked like a small pyramid, but the loose pile of stones was not held together by anything other than the careful placement of each uncut stone by its shape.
Inside the small stone pyramid was a place where a man could stand completely within the confines of the rising sides. In the center, next to a walk of smaller stones within the stone walls, smoke rose from a fire build lower in the center, fed by the wood placed near the man inside the wall, but away from the pit of fire (much like we had done at my grandfather’s fireplace).
“What is this?” I asked the LORD.
IT IS AN ALTAR.
This altar of uncut stones had no resemblance to the pristine polished marble of our whitewashed sanctuaries glowing through the artificial light of crystal churches and cathedrals. It was rather an altar of sacrifice – a place of the blood of animals and the ashes of burnt offering.
As I looked upon the man preparing the place with high reverence and low humility of his task before him, I pondered to consider the Blood of the Cross and without it, the grave of our hopelessness.
To be continued…
A Temporary Throne is an original work of Roger Harned,
© Copyright 2014, All Rights Reserved by the author.
