Surely the LORD Is in This Placeby Jeff Robb

Reflection

Jacob is not the man you would pick for a holy moment. He has just tricked his brother out of the blessing. Esau wants him dead. So Jacob leaves Beersheba and heads for Haran. He is alone, on foot, with not much to his name.

When the sun goes down, he stops where he is. He takes a stone for a pillow and lies down on the open ground. And that night God gives him a dream. A ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. The angels of God going up and coming down. And the LORD standing above it, making him promises. I am with thee, God says, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest.

Then Jacob wakes up. And the first thing out of his mouth is this. Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.

Notice those last four words. And I knew it not. God had not just arrived. He was there before Jacob lay down. Jacob simply hadn't noticed. He was running, and worried, and tired, and he thought he was alone.

Then he says, How dreadful is this place. That word dreadful can trip us up. Today it means terrible. Here it means something closer to awe. Jacob isn't saying the place is awful. He's saying it is too holy for him to take in.

Notice, too, what the place actually was. It wasn't a temple. There was no altar yet, no priest, no building. Just a field and a rock. In the morning Jacob named it Bethel, the house of God. But it was the same stony ground it had been the night before. What changed was Jacob's eyes.

Most of us live a good deal like Jacob on the road. We expect to meet God in church, or at some big turning point. But most of life happens in ordinary places. The kitchen table. The drive to work. A hospital waiting room. A long walk home.

Maybe you can think of a time like that. A season you went through without sensing God near at all, and only later, looking back, could you see that He had been there the whole way. That is Bethel. Not a special place, but an ordinary one, where the Lord was present before we knew it.

So here is something to try today. Somewhere in the middle of an ordinary hour, stop and say it, out loud or in your heart. The LORD is in this place. Not because you feel it. Because He promised it. He told Jacob, I will not leave thee. And Jesus told His disciples, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.

Jacob didn't earn that night at Bethel. He was a man on the run with a guilty conscience. That gives us hope. God meets people where they are, even when they aren't looking for Him.

Wherever you are listening from right now, the same is true. The LORD is in this place. Even if, like Jacob, we knew it not.

Cross-references

Psalm 139:7-10; John 1:51; Matthew 28:20