When heaven and earth meet

When Jacob woke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord was in this place, and I didn’t know it… How awesome is this place! This is nothing other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven”. Genesis 28:16-17

Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man”. John 1:51

Jacob is in trouble. More than once he has shown himself to be a nasty, lying individual. He has taken advantage of his perhaps rather gullible twin brother Esau. Most recently he has schemed with their mother Rebekah to deceive their father Isaac, who is old and blind, and so robbed Esau of Isaac’s fatherly blessing. Putting it crudely, he is what might be called “a nasty piece of work”.

And now he is on the run. Esau, understandably, has a grudge against him and declares his intention to kill him (Genesis 27:41), so Rebekah packs him off to find refuge with her brother Laban in the distant town of Harran. So far, so not very good.

But on his lonely journey something happens that transforms his life (Genesis 28:10-22)…

He reaches “a certain place”. This could be anywhere – only later do we learn its name. He’s ready for sleep. So, taking a convenient stone to use as a pillow, he lies down. And… he dreams.

“He saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord, who said ‘I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac…’”

In the following verses God renews for Jacob the covenant he had made earlier with Abraham and Isaac, the promise of great prosperity – and of great, historic usefulness: “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you…” That’s some promise!

There are many truths we can draw from this dramatic event. At the heart of it is the sheer grace of God: how he treats so well somebody who has behaved so badly. If that’s not grace, I don’t know what is!

If, by the way, you find yourself almost wanting to tell God off for acting unjustly, well, you won’t be the first person down through history to feel that way. But the answer to that is to remind ourselves that, in principle if not in detail, not a single one of us is any different from Jacob. After all, “we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God”, as Paul explains (Romans 3:23). Without God’s grace, where would any of us be?

Another lesson can be drawn by comparing this event linking heaven and earth with that massive building project described in Genesis 11: the tower of Babel, a “tower that reaches to the heavens”. Proud and stupid humankind embark on this to “make a name for ourselves” – and of course it all comes to nothing: “they stopped building the city… and the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth”.

And likewise we, if we try to build anything – including our very lives – apart from God, we are doomed to failure. We are simply incapable of climbing up to God; but the good news of the gospel is that we don’t need to, for he has come down to us, as Jacob learned that night, and as Jesus was, rather mysteriously, to promise later to Nathanael (John 1:51).

Deep and precious things. But what struck me most forcibly, re-reading the story, were Jacob’s words as he absorbed what had happened: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I didn’t know it”. The point being: “this place” was a bit of a nothing location, with no name that Jacob was aware of, the sort of place you pass through purely in order to get somewhere else, what we might call “the middle of nowhere” or “the back of beyond”.

A dry, scrubby bit of semi-desert, yet… God was there, and chose to reveal himself. A nothing place, maybe - yet Jacob was moved to call it “Bethel” (“the house of God”!) and “the gate of heaven”.

Buildings and “sacred spaces” in which to meet and worship God are often significant, and should not be undervalued. But they are not essential, for God can be met and enjoyed in any place where he sees fit to make himself known. This can happen even for somebody like Jacob who may very well have been totally neglectful of him. How much more, then, can it happen for the person whose heart is open to know his presence and experience his love?

Certainly, it’s not likely to happen in the dramatic kind of way it happened for Jacob! But who knows what God might see fit to do? We hear wonderful stories of people who meet with God in circumstances of war, tragedy, sickness, imprisonment or disaster. And even in the routine business of dull, ordinary, everyday life – even in that grey, dismal period after the excitement of Christmas and new year – let’s never doubt that God is there, even though we didn’t know it, and that we can have our own little “Bethel”.

Christian, expect an encounter with God today, however unpromising the prospect may seem!

Father, whatever this day may bring, however drab and ordinary it seems, may I, when I come to its end, be able to say with Jacob, “Yes, surely the Lord is in this place!” Amen.