Down the staircase

Around 2000 BC, some startling new technology appeared - the staircase. The picture here is of the ziggurat at Ur. It must have looked amazing for someone who had never seen a staircase before. I wonder if Jacob had heard reports of it or even seen it before he had his dream in which he saw a staircase to heaven in Genesis 28.

Now, we all know heaven isn’t literally hiding up in the clouds somewhere but still, in a profound way, we know that God is above us, higher than us in his ways, in his thoughts, in his goodness. How can we attain to such heights? Who can ascend the hill of the Lord says the Psalmist - only the one with clean hands and a pure heart (Psalm 24). We cannot climb up to God.

So God came down. God made heaven open and came down. But it is even better than that. God came down so that we may ascend. That is our Christian story.

The Biblical scholar, Richard Baukham, tells us that Jacob did not see God at the top of the staircase but at the bottom, beside him. We have a God who comes down to be beside us.

Jacob never expected that. You can hear the surprise in his voice as he looks around him and says, “Surely God was in this place and I didn’t know it”.

I spoke on this passage last week and these words have been ringing in my ears since then. What if God is in this place with me right now and I just didn’t see it? Jacob was in the midst of the wilderness, in a place so stony that he had to use a rock for a pillow. God came to visit him there. God wants us to know that he dwells in the stony places.

The stony place was called Luz but Jacob renamed it Bethel which means home of God. God visits the stony places of our hearts and renames them Bethel, home of God. The reason that we can be confident that God is in this place where we are is because God is in this place of our hearts.

Take a moment to place your heart on your heart and say, “Surely God is in this place and I didn’t know it!”

God has made the stony place of our hearts into a Bethel, a place where heaven touches earth, a place of encounter with God. And that is so very exciting because it means that we too can become a Bethel - a place of encounter with God for others.

Last week, a friend who is a nurse working in palliative care with dying patients told me that she treats every patient as a King or a Queen, a gift from God for her to care for. Just as Christ went low to serve, she sees herself as a servant to others. I felt deeply challenged that it is in serving others like Christ, going low down the staircase, that we too become a Bethel.

When God came down that staircase to meet Jacob, he told him that he was blessing him to make him and his family a blessing to the world. That promise is for us - a promise that heaven will touch earth in our hearts, a promise of encounter for us with God, a promise that others will encounter God through us.

May you know today that God is in this place, blessing you and making you a blessing!