DEC 12| Altars You Can Carry: How Simple Practices Mark God's Nearness in Your Daily Life
Discovering the ancient wisdom of Joshua 4 and why your faith needs physical anchors
You've probably forgotten something God did for you.
Not because you're ungrateful. Not because you don't care about your spiritual life. You've forgotten because you're human. And here's the uncomfortable truth about how our brains work: we're wired to remember threats, not gifts. We can recall every criticism from years ago while the answered prayers from last month have already faded into the background noise of our busy lives.
This is why ancient people built altars everywhere. They understood something we've lost in our smartphone-saturated, notification-driven digital age: faith needs physical anchors.
And buried in the book of Joshua is a practice so simple, so profound, that it might just transform how you experience God's presence in ordinary moments.
The Strange Command After the Miracle
In Joshua chapter 4, we encounter one of Scripture's most peculiar divine instructions. Israel has just experienced something extraordinary—they've crossed the Jordan River on dry ground. This is miracle territory. The kind of moment you'd think would be seared into collective memory forever.
But God knows better. He knows how quickly the extraordinary becomes ordinary in human hearts.
So instead of simply celebrating and moving on, God tells Joshua to do something that seems almost... silly. "Go back into the riverbed and grab some rocks."
Not golden monuments commemorating their triumph. Not elaborate carved statues to impress future generations. Just rocks. Twelve ordinary stones pulled from a muddy riverbed.
To understand why this matters so deeply, we need to step into the sandals of the Israelites standing on that riverbank.
The Context That Changes Everything
Picture this scene with fresh eyes.
Israel has been wandering in the wilderness for forty years. An entire generation—everyone who left Egypt as adults—has died along the way. These people standing at the Jordan's edge are the children who grew up hearing stories about the Red Sea parting, but most of them never witnessed it themselves.
And now, finally, they're crossing into the Promised Land. The destination their parents never reached. The fulfillment of promises made to Abraham centuries earlier.
But there's a significant problem: the Jordan River is at flood stage. Spring snowmelt from Mount Hermon has swollen the river to its most dangerous and impassable condition. The timing couldn't be worse.
Or could it?
God parts the water. Again. Like Father, like Son—echoing what He did at the Red Sea for their parents' generation. The priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant step into the flood waters, and the river stops. Piles up. Creates dry ground for an entire nation to cross.
This is when Joshua receives the unusual instruction found in Joshua 4:6-7:
"...that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, 'What do those stones mean to you?' then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD."
Three Transformative Purposes of the Stones
Notice something crucial in that passage. God didn't say "if" your children ask about the stones. He said "when." He's not hoping for curiosity—He's designing for it. These ordinary rocks become a conversation starter, a physical object that begs a question.
Here's what these memorial stones accomplished, and what similar practices can accomplish in your life today:
1. They Externalized Memory
The Hebrew word used here for "sign" is oth. This isn't just any word for a marker or symbol. It's the same word used for the rainbow after Noah's flood and the blood on the doorposts at the first Passover.
An oth isn't decorative. It's evidence. It's a physical object that testifies: "Something happened here. Something real. Something that changed everything."
God understands human psychology better than any neuroscientist. He knows that spiritual experiences feel vivid and life-changing in the moment but fade like morning fog under the heat of daily pressures. That prayer answered last year? Already hazy. That moment of profound peace during your crisis? The edges have softened. That time you knew—absolutely knew—God was guiding your decision? Now you're not so sure.
We need external anchors for internal realities. The stones provided exactly that.
2. They Created Inheritance
Here's where the purpose of these memorial stones gets even more profound.
The stones weren't really for Joshua. He was there. He saw the miracle with his own eyes. He felt the dry riverbed beneath his feet. He didn't need a reminder.
The stones were for grandchildren who weren't born yet. For generations who would only know this story because someone pointed at a pile of rocks and said, "Sit down. Let me tell you what God did."
We've lost this in modern Christianity. We've privatized faith so thoroughly that our children often don't know what God has done in our personal lives. We share Bible stories about Moses and David but keep our own God-stories locked away. We have no stones to point to.
When was the last time you told someone younger than you about a specific moment when God showed up in your life? Not a theological concept. Not a doctrine you believe. An actual story with a date and a place and details they could almost touch.
That's what the stones made possible.
3. They Were Portable
This detail might be the most revolutionary for how we think about spiritual practices today.
These weren't altars built on a sacred mountain somewhere, requiring pilgrimages to visit. The Israelites carried these stones with them. They set them up at Gilgal—their first camp in the Promised Land—where they could see them every day.
The altar moved with them.
This challenges our assumption that encountering God requires special locations or elaborate setups. The Israelites didn't leave their memorial behind. They brought it along for the journey.
The Pattern Throughout Scripture
This practice of physical remembrance shows up everywhere in the biblical narrative once you start looking for it.
When Jacob wrestled with God at Peniel, what did he do afterward? Built a stone pillar and named the place. When Samuel led Israel to victory over the Philistines, he set up a stone and called it Ebenezer—"stone of help." The Passover meal itself is a physical, sensory experience designed to trigger memory and spark questions from children.
And ultimately, Jesus himself becomes what Peter calls the "cornerstone"—the physical marker of everything God has done. The bread and wine of communion continue this tradition: ordinary physical elements carrying extraordinary spiritual weight.
The question for us isn't whether this pattern matters. Scripture is emphatic that it does. The question is: what does this look like in our lives today?
Building Altars You Can Carry
You and I don't build stone altars. Our neighborhoods have HOA regulations, and our apartments don't have riverbeds nearby. So what do we do with this ancient wisdom?
We build practices. Rituals. Simple physical things that anchor spiritual realities.
Here are some possibilities to consider:
A prayer journal where you record specific requests and answers. There's something powerful about flipping back through pages and seeing in your own handwriting: "Asked God for wisdom about the job decision—March 3rd" followed by "Clarity came through the conversation with Mom—March 17th." That journal becomes a pile of stones you can revisit.
A specific location where you walk and talk with God. Maybe it's a path through your neighborhood or a bench at a nearby park. When you return to that spot, your body remembers. The practice carries weight because it has physicality.
A song or hymn you return to in crisis. Music is physical—vibrations moving through air, patterns your brain recognizes. Having a "stone" you can sing when everything falls apart is more powerful than you might imagine.
Communion taken regularly and reverently. Bread you can taste. Wine or juice you can swallow. Jesus designed this as a physical remembrance for a reason.
A written prayer you've prayed hundreds of times. The Lord's Prayer. A collect from church history. Words you know so well they've worn grooves in your soul.
The Inheritance Your Grandchildren Need
Here's where this gets urgent.
Your grandchildren are going to need to know what God did in your life. Not what God did in Moses' life or David's life or the apostle Paul's life—they can read those stories themselves. They need YOUR stones.
And "I felt close to God sometimes" isn't a story. It's too vague. Too forgettable. It won't survive the telling.
But "Let me show you this journal from 2025, when everything fell apart and God still showed up"? That's a stone they can hold. That's evidence. That's an oth they can point to and say, "Something real happened. Something that changed everything for our family."
You don't need elaborate spiritual disciplines. You don't need seminary training or a monastery schedule. You don't need to become a different kind of person.
You need altars you can carry.
A Question Worth Sitting With
As you move through this week, here's a question worth letting settle into your soul:
When your children ask—and they will ask, in one way or another—what stones will you point to?
What physical practices mark God's nearness in your daily life? What evidence exists that you could show someone, hand someone, walk someone to?
And if you're realizing that your pile of stones is smaller than you'd like, that's okay. Today is a good day to pick up the first one.
Start a practice. Make a mark. Build an altar you can carry.
Because the God who parted the Jordan is still the God who shows up in ordinary moments. And your job isn't to make those moments more dramatic than they are.
Your job is to remember. And to give your children and grandchildren something to ask about.
What practices have helped you remember God's faithfulness? What "stones" have marked His nearness in your life? Share in the comments below—your story might be exactly what someone else needs to hear today.
An Invitation to go Deeper….
If today’s message spoke to you, join the FaithLabz 30-Day Prayer Challenge and strengthen your connection with God’s unshakable love. You are never alone—let’s grow together!
