Mom Heart Moments #149

The LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your descendants I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the LORD.

DELIGHT SWEPT INTO MY HEART as Sarah and I sat on the couch, poring over an old Victorian magazine. Sipping tea, we delighted in the pictures of green, rose-covered English countryside, reminding us of so many memories from past wanderings there. I wish I could stay in those happy moments, or at least that they lasted longer.

But by morning, the sink of life is piled again with dirty dishes to be done. There is a never-ending pile of dirty dishes in my life because everyone insists on eating and drinking at least three times a day! And so with the stress of life . . . bills, a child’s parking ticket, illness, the dog being sick, financial issues, doctor’s appointments, cars, computers . . . it never ends!

One morning I was discussing these dirty dishes of life with a friend. She said, “You know, God doesn’t want us to yell at the dishes or complain about them or cry over them or throw them across the room; He just wants us to take them in course, deal with them, and move on —and maybe even decide to have a good attitude about them every day.”

Abram was a regular man, approached by God in the midst of his normal, daily life. He responded to God’s call by making an altar and praising His name, right there in the sandy, weedy, spider-ridden piles upon which his sandals trod: those daily, messy places became altars, places of worship.

So, as I faced my sink this morning and also the dirty dishes of my life, I turned on one of Joel’s CDs and danced and sang and made the place where I was standing an altar of my own praise, a place of worship and grace.

What are the dirty dishes of life that bother you most? How can you make your own “sink” an altar today?