Daily Lesson for February 11, 2022

 Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Genesis chapter 28 verses

10 Jacob left Beer-sheba and went towards Haran. 11He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. 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; .  . .  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.’

The church where I was ordained was and still is a sleepy-looking little church on the outskirts of Durham.

“Welcome to Kudzu,” was what Pastor Gale said to me when I showed up my first day to intern. I didn’t know what Kudzu was, but later found out it was about a pastor (Will B. Dunn) and his community so backward that “even the Episcopalians handled snakes.”

Lowes Grove Baptist Church is the name of the church, though when my dad first saw it he said, “Looks more like Lonesome Grove”.

It ain’t much. But for a little — maybe a year in my it was everything. The church and Rev. Gale saved me. I found Jesus there — reluctantly.  I found myself too. 

Jacob was in the most lonesome and not much place of all. By appearance he could never have known that stone he took under his head had been an altar unto the Lord for his grandfather, as sacred a place as there is in all the earth. 

Walk the old cemeteries.  Pull over and look at the ruins of the old missions. See where a community once existed but vanished because the railroad decided to go through the Congressman’s hometown. There’s nothing there. Some old stones, a few barking dogs, and a bunch of buried Baptists. 

But if we had eyes to see we would know this is where a life was changed, it was where somebody met Jesus, where a a prophet was baptized, where a slave preacher read preached Exodus. 

If the old stones could speak then we’d know that there was the gate heaven. 

And here too then also.

Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.