Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Genesis chapter 28 verses 11 through 19:
Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. 12And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13And the Lord stood beside him and said, ‘I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; 14and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. 15Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’16Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!’ 17And he was afraid, and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.’ 18 So Jacob rose early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had put under his head and set it up for a pillar and poured oil on the top of it. 19He called that place Bethel.
“Beth-el” means “House of God”. It’s the LORD’s house, the place where God and God’s people dwell. It’s the place of the soul’s rest, the place of spiritual awakening. Only, it is none of these things save to the one who is awakened. To others it is just a place of old stones piled oddly together along the roadside.
Jacob’s grandfather Abraham laid these stones. He was the one who first passed this way and built an altar to the LORD. He gave the place its name.
But when Jacob came this way two generations later he did not see it as the House of God. He saw not the Sacred in this old place. He saw only lifeless rocks, not living stones. A sacred stone was not sacred to Jacob. It was better used as a pillow.
Then Jacob’s eyes closed. And somewhere in the mystery of night even with his eyes closed, Jacob saw. And then he saw. A ladder with angels ascending and descending. A doorway into heaven. And a voice: “I am the LORD, the God of your father and grandfather.” And then Jacob’s eyes opened. He awoke. Now he could see it all. “Surely this is the house of the LORD,” he said, “and I did not know it.”
Every generation must find its own sacred place in its own right. The House of the LORD — the church, the synagogue — these places are sacred. But one must have eyes to see. One must have ones eyes opened. For until we are awakened, an old church is just an empty bunch of rocks and stone pieces held together by decaying mortar. Oh but to the one who in the mystery of the night is made to see, that old pile of rocks is the place where angels descend and ascend. It is more than a relic of stone and mortar from generations past, it is Bethel — the very House of God.
I’m still in love with my wife Irie’s poem about the old 1830 meeting house which housed my first church at the center of the village in Colchester, Vermont. Poems do things; and the words give the old bones of the house spirit and life. And a pile of rocks is now for another generation seen for what it really is, Bethel:
This Church is rickety
Lives and bodies
halting speech and movement
Stained glass -- and carpets
Centuries of prayers
Slipping out of whitewashed pews
and crumbling bricks
I am this Church, somehow
Prayers and incantations
Sliding through a weathered Temple
He who has eyes to see let him see.
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