FRONTLINE SUNDAY 2
WHEREVER WE ARE
Genesis 28:10-22
God meets Jacob in an ordinary place
In church it’s easy to rush over the central point of the story. God meets Jacob! It sounds like the sort of church-talk that most will accept in church surroundings but possibly be suspicious about elsewhere.
Outside the church we would want to ask – did he imagine it all? Was it because of the stress he was under? But as Walter Brueggemann has said in his commentary on Genesis, ‘Neither of these will do. The narrative shatters our presuppositions. It insists the world is a place of such meetings.’
So, if it’s easy to rush over that amazing part of the story, we then try to make it safer for ourselves by thinking that we are most likely to meet God in ‘holy’ places: churches, chapels, prayer rooms etc. But the Bible is clear: most of the time God meets people in the least likely places. He meets Moses in a burning bush; Elijah not in a whirlwind, but in a whisper at the doorway to a cave. Jesus met Zacchaeus up a tree; the woman at the well, about her daily tasks; Peter at his workplace, a beach; Mary Magdalene looked for him in a tomb but found him standing behind her. Most of the encounters we read about in the life of Jesus occur in ordinary, everyday places. As Matthew Henry said, ‘No place excludes divine visits.’ There have been incredible stories of the places people have encountered God: prisons; schools; homes; workplaces; squash courts; pubs; fields etc. It still happens. God is here.
The places God has spoken to me
on mountains, in rivers – your not surprised
adjusting my rear-view mirror
sitting in my camper van
? when sitting with a homeless person
as well as in church, in the company of God’s people
as well as when at prayer seeking him by the way I have a spot in a field overlooking Cosmeston lakes where I have placed a stone!
God transforms the ordinary place into a holy place
For most travellers, this place was just a stopping-off place. Somewhere handy to spend the night. But for Jacob this very ordinary place becomes extraordinary. It is a touching point between heaven and earth. Jacob renames the place ‘Bethel’ which means ‘the house of God’. This is what we mean by frontlines – the ordinary places that are the touching places between God and his world that may not know his love. In the film with this series, ordinary places become ‘holy’ places: for the plumber, it was his customer’s house; for the grandma, the front room; for the businesswoman, the office; for the football coach, it was the pitch. When we go to our ordinary places ‘in the name of Jesus’, they become the touching points between heaven and earth.
For Wendy, the gym …..
People who have learnt to make their ordinary places, holy places
Brother Lawrence – meeting with God in the everyday
L’Ache – It was founded in 1964 when Jean Vanier, the son of Canadian Governor General Georges Vanier and Pauline Vanier, welcomed two men with disabilities into his home
I know a high executive that walked his building everyday praying for the corporation and the people
I know a teacher who prayed for every pupil in his class before and after every school day
I know a prison Governor who knew that the place in which she worked was meant to be about reformation and restoration and that Jesus could play the most significant part in that and saw to it that her prison was run with that in mind
I know a ‘successful’ woman who gladly set aside her career to look after an aunt with Alzheimers
I know someone who simply chose to sit on the same town centre bench, day in and day out and pray a blessing on everyone who walked by. After a period of time they were noticed and people began to stop a while to talk. The conversation often went to the love of Christ.
I know a … well the list goes on, many of these I have had the privilege of spending a day with them in their place of work, their frontline
Jacob marks the ordinary place with a stone
God assures Jacob that he hasn’t finished with him yet (Genesis 28:15). God’s purposes will be worked out through Jacob. Jacob has been a schemer his whole life and that’s why he is on the run. But in this place, he hears the voice of God reassuring him that God will make a difference through Jacob in the places he finds himself. Jacob ‘owns’ the place and knows that it is significant.
Jacob met God in a dream. Maybe that’s significant. Maybe it’s as we slow down that we allow ourselves to become more aware of God’s presence with us. When you go ‘through the door’ into the places you find yourself during the week, go with an expectation that God can be at work there and seek to join in with what he is doing.
We believe that God is Omnipotent and Omnipresent
All Powerful, He can do anything and He is Present Everywhere.
So – wherever you find yourself, this time tomorrow God is going to be there and He can do anything! We need to arouse our spiritual consciousness
This an extraordinary story and I have told you today about some extraordinary people
How do we mark the Ordinary places so that they become extra-ordinary places?
How do we take the natural things we do and make them Supernatural?
How do we do things in a Wonderful Way – Cause people to Wonder?