Jacob's Ladder

One of my many guiding lights are the words to a song that was actually meant to take a poke at religion. The song is "Jacob's Ladder", and it was recorded by Huey Lewis back in the eighties. And even though this song badly misrepresents Christian faith and what it can mean, there is one poignant line in the song.

"Step by step, rung by rung… all I want for tomorrow is to get it better than today"

In Genesis, Jacob sees a ladder in a dream. The ladder goes up, up, out of sight, all the way up to that impossible height that is heaven. Coming up and down the ladder (or perhaps staircase is a better word) are angels bearing messages. And standing right beside him is God, who says to Jacob, "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."

Jacob's reaction is to simply say, "Truly, the Lord is in this spot, although I did not know it!"

Isn't that how it always is? God is always there, and we just don't know it, we just don't see it. Whether the reason for that is the dim eyes in our spirit, our lack of spiritual sensitivity, or the hardness of heart that comes from the way our lives scar the soul, there is a blindness to the presence of God that sets in; the brilliant awareness we had of it as a child, the wonder at all the new things we experienced even if we couldn't put a finger on it. Increasingly, this is lost to us - lost in the maelstrom of an over-stimulating culture that assaults our senses, and our own accumulated grief, a grief which we no longer know how to heal from.

The skills need to heal that grief and to crack the opacity of our lives are ancient skills, but simple ones we all have in some measure already: empathy, tenderness, compassion, silence, wisdom, and above all humility: humility before others and before God. In the silence of the early morning, the matins would have us say, "O Lord, open my lips and let my mouth proclaim your praise!"

Instead, our cares and worries are the first things at our throat; how will I get through this day? How will I even get out the door on time?

Let it go.

For much of the last year, I've been in what could only be described as a spiritual funk. I've been so focused about what has been wrong on my walk, what I haven't yet fixed, and how I might recharge those batteries, that I've forgotten the one essential fact. I don't walk it alone. I don't fix it. And I don't recharge those batteries. I've been so busy wondering how a person goes about their spiritual renovations, that I forgot that it wasn't a person who fixed it up in the first place at all. It was God.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going, you know the way." (John 14:1-4)

As I prepare for the next Praise and Worship night I am leading, there are many signs that I am where I am supposed to be, and in them, I find I am renewed. The blessings I have struggled so hard for are just there, were just there... laying in the desert like Jacob's Ladder. They were there all along, "though I did not know it" like Jacob. And so I climb, step by step, rung by rung. Climbing and climbing. I can't see the top yet, and perhaps am not meant to while my heart still beats. But I do know the way.

And the way is up, up, into the clouds.