Looking for Altars Everywhere
The title of this blog is An Altar at my Kitchen Sink, a name I came up with as I realized what I loved writing about more than anything (well maybe with the exception of home organizing…I really really love organizing stuff!) is finding God in the ordinary, every day stuff of life. Finding God in the going to work and coming home, in the grocery shopping, laundry folding, and endless dish washing I do in my day to day. Finding God in conversations with friends and novels and playing a game with my boys. The Psalms tell us that the earth is the Lords and God’s fullness is in it—God is in everything we see and can be found not just in worship on Sundays but in the washing of dishes at the kitchen sink night after night. An altar at my kitchen sink. A place God reminds me over and over again that He is providing for us.
I think as humans we are all creatures of habit and our bodies actually crave routine—even those of us who don’t love the idea of a lot of structure have loose routines in our lives that give us a rhythm to our days. I’m fully convinced this need for rhythm is something God placed in each of us intentionally. There’s a rhythm to the very world God created—summer, fall, winter, spring. Sunrise, mid-day, afternoon, sunset, night time. The rhythm of our heartbeats he’s placed in our chest, the filling and exhaling of the air in our lungs, the spikes in melatonin at specific times a day inviting us into rest. God is a God who brought order out of chaos, spoke into the nothingness and created structure. The church year was designed around the rhythm of the life of Christ himself—with the church calendar beginning with the first Sunday of Advent as we prepare for the birth of the baby Jesus and carries us through his adult ministry to the season of Lent and the crucifixion, around through the resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and back to Advent. We tell the story of Jesus over and over every year in specific seasons to give rhythm to our spiritual lives.
As I have reflected more and more about this idea of the cadence of our days I’ve realized I have very specific benchmarks in my every day that remind me of God-With-Us—that God is indeed in the midst of the ordinary stuff of our every day. My biggest benchmarks, my places I pause and remember God’s unending presence, are the sound and scent of the coffee brewing in the morning and the sound of the dishwasher clicking on every evening. I know, those may sound so silly to you. But every morning the very first thing I do is stumble to the coffee pot and pour a cup. The warmth through the mug, the familiar scent, the first sip—there is something to that small ritual that grounds my day and I find myself murmuring under my breath “God give me what I need to serve You today.” An altar at my coffee pot. A stopping point each morning to pause and acknowledge God’s presence as we begin another day together. The clicking on of the dishwasher every evening serves as the same reminder to me. Every day it’s one of the last things I do before I settle in for the night of reading or a show or writing—I wipe down the counters one last time and turn on the dishwasher. The sound of the water beginning to run always makes me pause and exhale—another day coming to an end, the work and tasks are finished. The kids are in bed. God’s been with us. God’s provided, and the dishes I’ve used throughout the day to feed my family are being readied for another day tomorrow. An altar at my dishwasher. A place to pause and say “thank you.”
Over and over the Israelite people were asked to take ordinary stones and build an altar to commemorate and remember something God did for them in a particular spot. He would proclaim that space holy, a space they would pause at and tell the story of what God’s done. I’m wondering if you think about it, do you have any mini-altars in your life? Any simple daily rhythms that bring to mind God’s goodness and provision? Maybe think about that this weekend as you go about your day to day routine, God just might show you that you indeed have an altar in your laundry room or in the driver’s seat of your car.
