Monday, July 7, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Jacob’s ladder
Round and round we marched, music bouncing off the tin bottom of the Chicken Palace roof. In rows of four or five, singing our lungs out, laughing and full of joy, we couldn’t get enough, and the song went on forever. The Moonies were alive and well in northern California.
We are climbing Jacob’s ladder, soldiers of the cross.
Decades later I led that African-American gospel song from Liberia carried by slaves to America in 1750, playing guitar for normally reserved inmates who laughed and sang while they too marched around the room. The guard outside stepped in, but he was smiling too.
Every rung goes higher, higher, soldiers of the cross.
In a penitentiary when things get out of hand, people might get hurt. Not this time. Our song claimed victory for everyone, not just for those singers in the circle.
Rise, shine, give God the glory, glory, soldiers of the cross.
In the short moment of my life, that song has taken its place among the jewels in my crown. True too for William Blake, I take it – he painted one of his mystic spiritual paintings of Jacob’s ladder. His painting whispers the reality of God’s universe and the open door not quite visible at the top of the stairs.
Then Jacob had a dream: a stairway rested on the ground,
with its top reaching to the heavens;
and God’s messengers were going up and down on it.
What would we do without Jacob’s story of this moonlit night as he slept below the stars with a rock from the shrine for a pillow?
And there was the LORD standing beside him and saying:
“I, the LORD, am the God of your forefather Abraham
and the God of Isaac;
the land on which you are lying
I will give to you and your descendants.
These shall be as plentiful as the dust of the earth,
and through them you shall spread out east and west, north and south.
We all have dreams now and then which deserve this same magical understanding, where God appears and entreats us to keep on climbing, assuring us that we are loved and cherished and always will be.
“In you and your descendants
all the nations of the earth shall find blessing.
Know that I am with you;
I will protect you wherever you go,
and bring you back to this land.
I will never leave you until I have done what I promised you.”
And when we have those dreams, we do well to refuse psychological interpretations which remove God’s voice and substitute our own.
When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he exclaimed,
“Truly, the LORD is in this spot, although I did not know it!”
In solemn wonder he cried out: “How awesome is this shrine!
This is nothing else but an abode of God,
and that is the gateway to heaven!”
How do I know it’s God? The more I think about it, the less I know. Kids are so much better than adults at just letting the story be the story, and so I learn from them, often more than they learn from me.
Children, do you love my Jesus? Soldiers of the cross.
In the story Jacob does set conditions after catching his rational breath. Why? I guess because he’s an adult, thinking too much for himself, still afraid to just trust God.
If God remains with me,
to protect me on this journey I am making
and to give me enough bread to eat and clothing to wear,
and I come back safe to my father’s house, the LORD shall be my God.
“OK, Jacob,” God might be thinking. How many miracles do you need for you to trust me? But my love for you is absolute, and if this matters so much to you, then so be it.
When Moses wrote Psalm 91, he heard God calling our names. His commitment is eternal and unconditional, even if we set our own conditions or succumb to our moments of despair. God speaks his own word like a bell ringing in my ear:
Because he clings to Me, I will deliver him;
I will set him on high because he acknowledges My Name.
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in distress.
(Genesis 28, Psalm 91, 2 Timothy 1, Matthew 9)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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