Today’s Old Testament reading is one of my favorites. From Genesis 28, 10-22a, it tells the story of Jacob stopping to sleep while journeying to find a wife from his mother’s people. He takes a stone for a pillow and dreams of a ladder, or ramp, stretching from the earth to the heavens, filled with angels or messengers ascending and descending. In the dream, God was looking over him and promised the land to Jacob and his descendants, who would be “like the dust of the earth,” a blessing to “all the clans of the earth.”
“And look,” God continues, “I am with you and I will guard you wherever you go and I will being you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done that which I have spoken to you.”
Jacob woke up and said, “Indeed, the Lord is in this place, and I did not know.” He stands the stone used for a pillow upright, pours oil over it, and uses it to mark the holy place, calling it Bethel, the house of God.
I am often like Jacob. with my life, unaware of the Holy Ground on which I stand. All places can be a Bethel. God is with us always, yet, we do not recognize the Sacred in our midst. We may not have a vision or dream, but something happens to shake us out of our complacency and open our hearts to the reality of God-With-Us.
God is faithful, no matter the circumstances of our lives. The Holy One is Present, even when we do not see. What may seem barren and hopeless can be a place to encounter God, and be transformed by the experience. In the most ordinary circumstances, the possibility remains to encounter the Holy Mystery.
Jacob’s comment is so like mine: God is here and I didn’t even know it! Often I don’t understand the true blessing of a place or experience until I have left and started looking back. Jacob reminds us to be present to the moment. To realize any time, any circumstance, difficult as it may be, can be a place of encounter.
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