Where is your favorite “alone with the Lord” location? Wish-list answers might be “an empty ocean beach”, “perched on a warm rock by a mountain stream”, or “snuggled into a window seat”. Maybe your reality is “a kitchen table at 4 a.m.”, or “I’m a mom—what’s ‘alone’ again?”

Did anyone pick this place—a spot outdoors…smelly, noisy animals…blood-drenched rock…gory knife…odor of burnt flesh? Not a top-10 site for fond, sensory memories. Yet the exiled psalmist, yearning so for the living God, was envious of the sparrow so at home there.

How much closer can we be to our Lord than at the place of sacrifice? What better spot than at the altar with our High Priest, where we die daily to self, consecrating our life to Him. Our praise and thanksgiving waft upward as a sweet aroma. Our place of death becomes a place of renewed life. And that can happen anywhere.

Psalm 84:3, 4