Genesis
28: 10-19a
You’ve heard the
expression, “You’ve made your bed, now lie in it.” That could be perfectly applied to Jacob’s
situation as we encounter him today in our reading from Genesis. Jacob has made quite a bed for himself with
acts of cunning and deception at home in Beer-sheba. Being the 30 second or so younger brother of
his twin, Esau, meant that Jacob was never going have the life he wanted. All the perks would always go to the
firstborn and that was something that Jacob found very hard to live with. So taking matters into his own hands he cleverly
cheats his brother out of his birthright and then goes on to trick his elderly,
blind father, Isaac, into giving him the blessing that Esau was supposed to
have. With this stolen inheritance Jacob
naturally thinks his life is set - comfy tents, flocks of sheep, servants
waiting and ample land are all in his near future. There’s one thing, though, that Jacob doesn’t
envision and that is Esau’s fury. Esau
is so overcome with anger that he makes plans to kill his brother. And when Jacob discovers that he’s a marked
man he runs leaving his home striking out for his uncle’s house in a far off
land called Haran.
And this is where
we meet Jacob. He’s left everything in
the dust. All plans of a secure and
comfortable life now gone. Jacob finds
himself completely estranged from his family, abandoning all he knows and
running for his life. It certainly is a
hard bed that Jacob has made for himself - so hard that even his pillow is a
stone.
Under these
circumstances it’s remarkable that Jacob is able to find sleep, let alone
dream. But he does and in his dream he
see a ladder with its base on earth extending up into heaven with angels going
up and down. And God is right there next
to Jacob with words of promise and comfort.
Words of promise and comfort - for this scoundrel? Yes - it’s quite amazing. Despite Jacob’s very real flaws God cares for
him and has a future for him. “I am the
Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac,” and in this dream
comes promises of land and family and blessings ending with, “Know that I am
with you and will keep you wherever you go.”
Upon awaking the
first thing out of Jacob’s mouth is, “Surely the Lord is in this place - and I
did not know it!” Now nothing has
really changed for Jacob. He’s still
pretty much in the middle of nowhere.
He’s still a hunted man with only a stone for a pillow, but his
encounter with God has changed his perspective - his circumstances seem
different - there is hope. And with this
new vision Jacob takes that rock hard pillow which just the night before had
offered little to no comfort, turns it upright, consecrates it with oil and
makes it into a type of altar marking that desolate place as holy for it is a
place where Jacob encountered God.
Yet as special as
that piece of land was, what Jacob had yet to realize was that “this place”
that he marked with the stone, “this place” is not so much a particular
geographical spot as it is Jacob’s own life.
Surely God is in Jacob’s life and he did not know it!
And surely God is
in your life and in my life - every day, every place, every moment. But do we know it? When things are going well, when life is
meeting our expectations it may be relatively easy to feel assured that God is
in our lives. But what about those times
when we find ourselves in a desolate place lying on a hard bed with only a
stone for a pillow? A bed, perhaps, of
disappointment or loss or some kind of struggle - one we may have made for
ourselves or one created by circumstances beyond our control. Do we know then that surely God is in this
type of place? It’s a challenge - Jacob
confesses that he did not know it. And
there are times where we don’t know it either. Yet Jacob’s story reminds us of the very
good news that yes, even in hard places with stones for pillows, even there God
is that place for God is with us and in us.
And that means there is always hope.
That’s not to say
God necessarily turns all hard stones into soft pillows. It certainly wasn’t so for Jacob. Even after his dream life was not cushy. Upon arriving at his uncle’s place in Haran,
Jacob worked long and hard to rebuild his life and faced an obstacle or two in
the form of a cunning uncle who had his own tricks up his sleeve.
Jacob struggled
and his life didn’t go as he had originally planned, yet in the end God’s
promises of land, descendants, and blessings did come to pass. But more importantly, the reassuring words,
“Know that I am with you and I will keep you wherever you go,” never failed for
Jacob nor does it ever fail for us. We
all eventually experience difficult times - hard places full of stones. Yet if we are willing and open to it even
those places can be full of grace - where God is very near and present and,
perhaps, taking those stones and using them to shape us as well as to reveal
herself more fully to us. Stones, that
in time, may be set upright and consecrated marking times and places that we
did indeed encounter the sacred and holy.
The miracle isn’t that God breaks into our lives at certain points. That is always happening. The miracle is that we recognize it
especially in the stony places, places that we never expected nor wanted to be. But when our eyes are open to see the reality
- that God is with us and will keep us wherever we go - there is hope. So let us wake up to the good news that is
true in this moment and every moment - that God is in this place because surely
God is in our lives: may we know it always.
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