The Old Testament lesson we read in our worship today is about Jacob's vision of heaven in Genesis 28. As I think about Jacob I see a man with a past he is running away from into a future he can't imagine. He is a man who desperately needs to understand the aphorism, "Wherever you go, there you are."
This man is running from the problems he created at home. He has destroyed the family and now has made what seems to be a plausible excuse for leaving, to find a wife among his family's people, but that isn't the real reason. His mother has heard his brother breathing threats of murder against him because Jacob has ended up with what should have belonged to his brother. (There is a hint of Cain in this story.) God had promised these would be his but Jacob and his mother took them instead of receiving them from God (see Eve in Genesis 3 as she took and ate).
Jacob's past hasn't yet been dealt with, that comes later, but now he is going to meet a deceiver who is better than he is in order to come face to face with the destructiveness of this pattern for life. We can't run from the truth about ourselves, it needs to be dealt with in order that it doesn't continue to haunt us forever.
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