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In all of scripture, and even in all of literature, you would be hard pressed to find a character more interesting than Jacob. We meet him first before he is even born -- his mother, Rebekah, is in such agony during her pregnancy carrying him and his twin brother that she wants to die. When the babies finally make their appearance, little Esau comes out first, but his brother is holding onto his heel, and, as the legend has it, that is why he was given the name Jacob -- it meant "heel" or "trickster" or "supplanter." And since names, then and now, carry baggage, we have a huge clue as to the kind of person this baby is going to become.

Yes, the lad grew up to be a "heel." You remember those stories from your Sunday school lessons. He cheated his brother out of his inheritance. He duped his father, Isaac, on his deathbed. Esau was ready to kill him, but Jacob approached the problem "spatially" -- he got out of that space. He ran for the hills, literally. He headed north toward his Uncle Laban in Haran.

Something strange happened then. As Jacob paused on his journey, and with no one hot on his tail, he made camp for the night. His escape had been too hasty to prepare a bedroll, so he just curled up on the ground with a smooth stone for a pillow. Tossing and turning, unable to sleep because of a guilty conscience? Not at all. Like a baby he slept, and dreamed the kind of dream that one would have thought would be reserved for a saint -- a ladder reaching from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending. And standing above it all, the God of all creation saying not, "How dare you?" but, "I am going to bless you. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."

Wow! I guess we should not be surprised by Jacob's response. He took that stone that he had used for a pillow, propped it up, poured oil on it, and called it Bethel ("God's House"), the least expensive sanctuary in the history of religion.

Good ol' Jacob -- a scamp and a scalawag, to be sure. But there must have been something redemptive about him because people of faith from generation to generation have heard "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and [even] Jacob." Amazing.

The message in this brief story is one of sheer grace. The God who told a scoundrel like Jacob, "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go," is the same God who speaks to us. When we are frightened by new places, new people, new ideas, new responsibilities, God is there promising, "I am with you." When we feel trapped by problems we cannot solve and stuck with people with whom we cannot get along, God is there promising, "I am with you." When we feel totally alone as Jacob felt out there in the desert, when we feel lost, God is there promising, "I am with you." When we lose hope that anything will ever be better than it is now, when it looks as if evil triumphs and good is trashed, God is there promising, "I am with you!"