Genesis 28:10-17
Today, the first Sunday of 2021, the passage tells us about another longest and hardest trip for a better Christian life from the dream God dreams and to the dream we dream.
The message of today’s passage is very clear; that we are called to become dreamers, not wishful thinkers. In reality, we are too busy with leading, managing, feeding, fixing, struggling, or surviving. Well, Jacob, in the passage, was one of us.
Who was Jacob? He was a two-time, double crosser, who robbed his brother of his birthright and his blessing. He was an accomplished deceiver who pulled the wool over his own smooth hands and his father’s blind eyes in order to steal what he wanted. He was a fugitive on the run away from his family, especially his brother Esau who could kill him.
He may not deserve the dream, but he needed it. And what was more, he believed it.
In verse 16, he responded, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” With his confession, what had looked to him like no place turned out to be God’s place. What had looked to him like an ordinary pile of rocks turned out to be the gate of heaven.
Jacob set his stone pillow up as a pillar to mark the spot. Then, he called it Bethel, the house of God. Do you know where your Bethel is? It should not be a place, but it can be a time or memory.
It comes when we may be exhausted.
It comes when we have run out of things we can do.
It comes when our luck has run out.
It comes not because we do a lot of good things, but because how God’s dreams comes to us.
It is our happy calling to find a certain place and to set this place with an ordinary pile of rocks,
where God’s ladder or God’s dream touches down on our own ordinary times and places.
When we wake, it is our happy calling to set up pillars to mark all the spots, and declare it, Bethels, the house of God. Bethel is not somewhere, but everywhere and every place, where it has pleased God to be with us.
We are all dreamers who has God’s dream.
Let’s keep dreaming of marking each and every day in the year of 2021 with God’s presence and promise. “God is with us… God will give us…God will keep us wherever we go ….
God will not leave us until God has done what God has promised us.”
Amen.