MAY 2, 2022

GENESIS 28:16

When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”

“Surely God is in this place.” The claim is surprising. God is in the “place,” the “holy place,” of Jacob's Ladder, among the people of Haran, (Moabites, Ammonites) not followers of the God of Abraham and Isaac. What, we might ask, is God doing THERE?

Yet God is present. Jacob’s dream becomes one of the most lasting and captivating images of the connection between heaven and earth. Jacob’s ladder has been painted, carved into stone, and set in stained glass. We sing old Spirituals about it. How many of you remember Led Zepplin’s Stairway to Heaven? Jacob’s ladder’s connection

between heaven and earth has regular cameos on TV and film. I have read that Jacob’s Ladder is even a popular wooden toy. How many Bible passages have their own toy? 

We are fascinated by this image of Jacob’s dream, Jacob’s ladder, this sense of God’s relationship to earth.

But don’t miss what Jacob says when he wakes up. Surely God is in this place and I, I did not realize it. He wakes up, and his realization is that he has missed something. He has missed the presence of God. Jacob owns the responsibility for not noticing, himself.

This story in Genesis 28 leads me to ask: “How often do I not realize?” How often do we miss God’s presence? I remember hearing someone say, “One of the biggest blunders in the spiritual life, is assuming I know where to find God.” I have made that blunder a few times, haven’t you? What I keep learning is that God keeps showing up where I least expect it." In dreams, in mangers, on a cross, in personal appearances on the other side of an empty tomb, including making breakfast for his disciples. (John 21)

As Mike Angel puts it, “Sometimes we can be so sure where we are to find God, so expectant about how God is supposed to act, that we miss where God is present. Wearing blinders that we’ve constructed, we pass through life looking for the God we can’t see, until we trip over the rungs of a ladder connecting heaven and earth.”

During this series of devotions, I pray that together we will be surprised by God’s presence, by the divine showing up where we least expect.

Surely God is in this place.

HELP ME NOTICE!!