My status last Wednesday: “Sitting in the prayer room at our old house for the last time.”

We signed final papers selling that house last week, and I couldn’t help but spend some quiet time in the living room, where the Lord and I spent many early mornings together.

Through various trials, tribulations and triumphs, God drew me closer to Him there than I’d ever been. We talked in earnest together. He calmed my soul. He stirred me up. He heard my cries. He answered my prayers. He shared His Word.

I lay on the couch and watched the limbs of the trees outside reach toward heaven. I lay on the rug and considered God’s mercy on my unworthiness. I wept. I laughed. I pondered.

We spent 19 years together in that house, God and I.

Now, with the kids grown and living on their own, Sherry and I have moved. Faithfully, the Lord sold our old house, closing exactly 60 days from when we listed it.

That morning, in the prayer room (living room) of the old place, I remembered how often God’s followers marked their journeys with an altar. Abram did it. So did Noah. Jacob. So many others.

Each altar marked an important passage. Moses built an altar to mark God’s faithfulness in defending His people from Amalek. Later the Israelites took 12 stones from the Jordan to mark their crossing into the Promised Land.

Like the patriarchs, I built an altar that morning.

Not a physical altar, of course, but one from the heart. One that marks and celebrates the changes God wrought in my deepest parts while I lived in that neighborhood… while Sherry and I grew through three different churches… while our children challenged us with their journey from childhood to adulthood.

Am I different than the year we moved into that house? Oh, so very different. So very much better, but still so very far from what I should be.

For the patriarchs, altars were a way to say, “You did it, God! Not me, but you!” It was also their way to say, “I trust you for the next thing.”

So I say with my altar… and with the patriarchs, I pack up my tent so the long Journey with Christ can continue until at last I reach home.

Ever heard of the Arp Award? No reason you should. But I won it.

(Note: I am deeply double-minded about posting this item. I hate boastfulness, and this seems boastful. But I do have a point to make, and this event makes it well. So I’m counting on you to understand.)

The Arp Award is the highest honor bestowed by the Texas Nursery & Landscape Association. It was created when Arp Nursery donated a silver bowl to be passed down annually to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the nursery/landscape industry. “These individuals exemplify the Association’s ideals: innovation, service, and highly ethical behavior in both business and personal lives.”

I join every past recipient I know in saying, “Who? Me? You’re kidding.” But for some reason, a “special nominating committee” has selected one person nearly every year since 1942. (My grandfather received it exactly 60 years ago.) This year they selected me.

Here are some things I find significant about this award:

1. You can’t buy it, because it’s not for sale. If you try to buy it, you immediately disqualify yourself because you’ve betrayed one of the association’s stated ideals.

2. You can’t campaign for it. It’s not like an office or position that’s won by politics.

3. You can’t earn it. This is hardest to comprehend. This is not like a Boy Scout merit badge, where the requirements are tangibly spelled out. Instead, you are chosen.

4. Yet… it is greatly desired.

The point? It reminds me of God’s merciful gift of redemption through Jesus Christ:

1. You can’t buy it. If the richest man in the world gave everything he had to wonderful charitable causes — perhaps even the church — it would not buy him a place of fellowship with God. The gifts God desires are from those who lay up riches in heaven.

2. You can’t campaign for it in your own will. Kiss up to anybody you like — even international church leaders or evangelists — and your attempts to make your own way to heaven will fall short on the day that votes are counted. The pleas that God desires are not to men, but to Himself.

3. You can’t earn it, though the requirements for salvation are actually spelled out quite distinctly. “Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself.” Do it from birth to death, every waking and sleeping moment of the day. It’s impossible. Only Jesus Christ has ever done such a thing.

4. Yet… it is greatly desired. So how does one receive it? By turning to the only who has ever earned it, Jesus; by confessing our own lack of lived-out love for God; by turning to Christ to intercede with the Father for our sinfulness; and by walking with Him the rest of our lives.

When the Arp Award is presented, everyone there is invited to drink a toast from what has been poured into it.

When Christ was presented for sacrifice, He invited His disciples to drink deeply as well. “In the same way also [Jesus] took the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Corinthians 11:25-26) Even today, He invites to drink Him in.

Am I boastful? Perhaps a little. But I pray the boasting has been directed correctly. “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (2 Corinthians 10:17) To Him be the glory.