Hard Alters

It occurred to me this week that in the Old Testament, all the times I remember God instructing one of the great fore fathers to errect an alter to Him, he told them to use rocks. These rocks were places of rememberance; places to remember what God did. Couldn't he have told them to plant flowers? Couldn't he have told them to create a beautiful lake? What about just carving something into a tree or something....something other than cold, hard, stones. I asked my husband what he thought about this idea. He said it was probably because God knew that it needed to be something sturdy and durable. Perhaps he is right. I wonder if it wasn't a sort of analogy to what God knew would be the times that we remember Him working in our lives. Perhaps God understand that the hardest, roughest circumstances were going to be the ones when we remembered His hand helping us the most. Maybe God understood the cold, hard feelings and emotions we experience when He is working most in our lives. Once those circumstances and hard times are past, we look back at that place in our lives and remember...but all we see left is the piles of rocks...because we
almost always move on to softer, warmer, prettier times. But that pile of rock is still there in our past...and we often say, "It wasn't as bad as I thought at the time."

Any thoughts?