Jacob is on the run, banished from his home and family as a result of his own deception and deceit. He’s out in the wilderness, utterly alone. When the sun goes down on the first day of his journey, he lies down, with a stone for a pillow, falls asleep, and has a dream.
That dream—subject of the camp song—is about a ladder, or ramp, with angels descending and ascending, and Jacob hears the voice: the voice that came to his father and grandfather and grandmother. “Behold, 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.”
God comes to us not just when we are sitting in our pew in church or saying our prayers. God comes to us in our humanness: where we are most human, which means in our frailties and weaknesses, in our doubts, in anxieties and fears, in our hopes and our dreams.
Many of us are juggling so many things that we are run by our lives rather than living them as gifts from God. What if we could learn to stop for a moment many times a day? What if in those moments we could decide to notice the sheer miracle of being alive? We would then be taking awe breaks instead of coffee breaks.
Dr. Willy L Mafuta, Ph.D, Th.D
Senior Pastor,
Hopewell United Methodist Church, Hopewell, NJ 08525
Adjunct Professor
World Christianity, Public Religion, Theology and Culture
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, NJ 08542