“Then Peter got down out of the boat…” Matt. 14:29
Abraham was a real altar builder. Sometimes, it was the very first thing he did when he arrived in a new place. He would stop and worship, marking the ground as belonging to the Lord.
(Unlike us, the first thing we usually do is plug in our phones.)
Isaac built two altars, if we count the one he was nearly BBQed on.
And Jacob. I’ve always thought of him as suspect—the kind of man who shows up at church on Sunday morning, then cheats the preacher by that afternoon. But after twenty years away from home, Jacob quietly built an altar in Shechem.
He named it El Elohe Israel—God, the God of Israel.
That wasn’t just a name. It was a declaration. Jacob was no longer living off the faith of his fathers. He had seen God for himself. The God of Abraham and Isaac had become his God.
Jacob’s story reminds us that change is possible when we make God OUR God. When we see God as Jacob did—not just as a distant figure, but as the one who meets us personally—we begin to walk in a new direction.