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.