building altars

"Look at what's before you: the Chest of the Covenant. Think of it—the Master of the entire earth is crossing the Jordan as you watch. Now take twelve men from the tribes of Israel, one man from each tribe. When the soles of the feet of the priests carrying the Chest of God, Master of all the earth, touch the Jordan's water, the flow of water will be stopped—the water coming from upstream will pile up in a heap."

Joshua 3:11-13

building altars stone by stone


9 Just when we wondered if what we were doing here was making a difference, just when we had spent hours scratching our heads and sighing and thinking and analyzing what effect being here in CZ was having, if it was time to go home, just when we came upon the banks of the Jordan River....

It seems to me that God has walked us through a fiery furnace this summer so that our eyes could finally be clear enough to see what He is doing. I think that sometimes what we can't see we assume isn't happening, but I propose that we can't often see what is right in front of us because we are blinded by something.

When I step back a few paces I am struck by how clear the picture is. Like a Signac viewed up close is hard to make out...





Paul Signac, pointillism, Femmes au Puits
I was lucky enough to see this in person at MART in Rovereto Italy



...God gave us the opportunity to step back and take in all that He is doing. Our Bible study is comprised of a committed group of people searching and travelling together on a spiritual journey, our church is eager to welcome us all in as we try to marry our homegroup and tiny congregation together in order to strengthen both, our ladies' group is eager to begin a new semester of meetings and deeper friendships. In a culture that is hard to break into, we have a large group (about 20+ people, large considering and average church like ours has about 8-10 people) who dig coming to our house and talking about spiritual things or who simply look forward to hanging out with us.

I can see here that God is at work...