The God in the Middle of Nowhere (Day 8: Roots & Shoots)

• The Ornament: The Ladder
• The Scripture: Genesis 28:10-22

The Surface Reading

We often think of “Jacob’s Ladder” as a sweet story about angels watching over us while we sleep. We picture a young man resting peacefully on a rock, dreaming of a beautiful staircase to heaven, and receiving a blessing. It feels like a lullaby.

A Closer Look

Guide: Pete Enns (The Bible for Normal People)

But Pete Enns reminds us that the context of this story is actually a “chaotic sibling soap opera.”

Jacob isn’t on a spiritual retreat; he is on the run. He has just scammed his blind father, stolen his brother’s blessing, and blown up his family. He is a con artist fleeing a murder plot.

When he collapses in the desert, he is at the lowest moral point of his life.

And that is when the heaven opens.

Enns points out that the “ladder” in the dream was likely a Ziggurat—the ancient Babylonian temples that looked like massive staircases. People built ziggurats to climb up to the gods. But in Jacob’s dream, he doesn’t have to climb. The traffic is moving in the other direction. God comes down the ramp to stand beside this lying, cheating, exhausted refugee.

The Lens of Shalom

Guide: Barbara Brown Taylor (An Altar in the World)

In her book An Altar in the World, Barbara Brown Taylor points out that Jacob’s great discovery wasn’t just about angels; it was about Geography.

Up until this moment, people assumed God lived in special places—temples, high mountains, or sacred tents. But Jacob discovers God in the middle of nowhere.

This restores the Shalom between Heaven and Earth.

The ladder connects the two realms, revealing that they aren’t far apart. The earth is not a “waiting room” for heaven; the earth is the House of God (Bethel).

Taylor writes, “The great struggle of the Christian life is not trying to find God, but trying to stay awake to the God who is right here.”

Shalom is realizing that every patch of dirt—even the one you are sleeping on tonight—is holy ground.

The Question

When Jacob wakes up, he doesn’t promise to be a better person. He simply says, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.”

He is shocked that God would be here—in the dirt, in the failure, in the mess of his own making.

Where have you assumed God cannot be?

Is there a “mess” in your life right now—a broken relationship, a failure, or a shameful habit—that you assume is a God-free zone?

What if you woke up today and realized that the Lord was in this place, too?