The Stairway in the Wilderness

Jacob left Beersheba in a hurry. Behind him was his brother Esau. Jacob had just tricked their father into giving him Esau's blessing, and Esau was planning to kill him. Ahead of him lay weeks of walking to his uncle Laban's house in Haran.

The sun went down on him in an empty place, with no tent, no fire, and no supper. He picked up a stone, set it under his head, and lay down on the hard ground. (Nobody has ever woken up from a rock pillow feeling rested.)

While he slept, he dreamed.

A stairway stood on the ground right beside him, and its top reached all the way into heaven. Angels of God were on it, going up and coming down, the way people hurry up and down the stairs of a busy house.

And above it stood the LORD.

"I am the LORD," he said, "the God of your grandfather Abraham and the God of your father Isaac. I will give this ground you are lying on to you and your children. Your family will be like the dust of the earth, spreading east and west and north and south. Through you and your children, every family on earth will be blessed. Look, I am with you. I will keep you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done everything I promised."

God did not say one word about the goat hair, or the borrowed clothes, or the lie Jacob had told his blind old father.

Jacob woke with a jolt. "The LORD is in this place," he gasped, "and I did not know it!" He looked around at the rocks and the dark, and he shook. "How awesome this place is! This is the house of God. This is the gate of heaven!"

Early in the morning, Jacob stood his stone pillow up on its end, like a post, and poured oil over the top. (In those days, pouring oil on something was a way of saying, "This belongs to God.") Jacob gave the place a new name, Bethel, which means "house of God."

Then Jacob made a promise of his own. "If God will be with me," he said, "and keep me safe on this road, and give me bread to eat and clothes to wear, and bring me home to my father's house in peace, then the LORD will be my God. This stone will be God's house. And I will give God back one out of every ten things he gives me."

(Jacob answered with "if." He was still Jacob.)

Jacob walked on toward Haran, and the stairway stayed in the dream. Heaven had opened for one night, over one stone, for one runaway.

Jacob's grandchildren told their grandchildren about the stairway at Bethel, and every one of them waited for heaven to open again.

One day a man named Nathanael met a teacher from Nazareth. "Look, a true Israelite," the teacher said, which meant one of Jacob's own family. "There is no trickery in him."

Nathanael stared. "How do you know me?"

"I saw you under the fig tree," the teacher said. "You will see greater things than that. You will see heaven opened, and the angels of God going up and coming down on the Son of Man."

The angels in Jacob's dream went up and down a stairway. Now the teacher said they would go up and down on him. The stairway was Jesus.