I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading. I had been using One Year Bible Online, but it was time for a change.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Joshua 21-22.

    When the tribes which had land east of the Jordan River returned to their land, they built an altar before crossing over the Jordan. The rest of the tribes prepared to go to war against them for doing so. They believed that the tribes east of the Jordan were setting up a second place of worship to compete with the one at Shiloh, where the Tabernacle was residing at the time. Fortunately, before they went to war, they sent a delegation to the tribes east of the Jordan.
    Despite the harsh rhetoric of the delegation, the tribes east of the Jordan acknowledged that the other tribes would be right to be angry and hostile if they had done as they supposed. However, they informed the delegation that they had not set up the altar in order to make offerings upon it. They had merely set it up as a memorial and a reminder that they had an equal claim to worshiping God as those living west of the Jordan. I had been going elsewhere with this, but I just realized that this passage is an important reminder that we belong to God, not the other way around. We do not have exclusive right to worship God. Let us welcome all who want to join us in worshiping God.