IV.
As you spend time with this passage, what do you discover about Abram’s altar building?

V.
Genesis 13:8-18 (NRSVue)

Then Abram said to Lot, “Let there be no strife between you and me and between your herders and my herders, for we are kindred. Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right, or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.” Lot looked about him and saw that the plain of the Jordan was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar; this was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. So Lot chose for himself all the plain of the Jordan, and Lot journeyed eastward, and they separated from each other. Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the plain and moved his tent as far as Sodom. Now the people of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.

The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. Rise up, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.” So Abram moved his tent and came and settled by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the Lord.

VI.
In this passage we see Abram and Lot agreeing to part company and taking their herds and herders with them.

Abram builds the altar after he is directed by the Lord to look at the land he is being given and “to walk through the length and the breath of the land.”

Abram then settles by the “oaks of Mamre” and builds an “altar to the Lord.”

As I look back over Genesis 12:6-9 it seems to me Abram’s altar building is, in each situation, connected to the covenant that exists between Abram and The Lord. It marks a making of the covenant or a renewal of the covenant. And, maybe we could add, it marks an important encounter Abram has with The Lord.

Have you ever found you wanted to acknowledge in some fashion an especially holy moment. A commitment to God, a renewal of your commitment to God, or some moment that seems heavily filled with God’s presence.

What kind of “altar” might you build? What do you do to acknowledge those very holy moments?

charles
{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}