Daily Affirmations - Day 7 - Place of Safety - House of God

Day 7: House of God

Let the skies pour down righteousness; let the earth open. let them bring forth salvation

[Jacob] was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:17).

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Jacob has fled from home on account of his... brother’s fierce wrath at the trick which their scheming mother and he had contrived... (Genesis 27).

His life was in danger; he was alone, a dim future was before him, perhaps his conscience was not very comfortable. These things would be in his mind as he lay down and gazed into the violet sky so far above him, burning with all its stars. Weary, and with a head full of sordid cares, plans, and possibly fears, he slept; and then... this vision...

Conceive of the... vision as a broad stair or sloping ascent, rather than a ladder, reaching right from [Jacob's] side to the far-off heaven, its pathway peopled with messengers, and its summit touching the place where a glory shone that paled even the lustrous constellations of that pure sky.

Jacob had... been conscious of... little connection with heaven; the vision shows him a path from his very side right into its depths. He had probably thought that he was leaving the presence of his father’s God when he left his father’s tent; the vision burns into his astonished heart the consciousness of God... in the solitude and the night.

We pass from... Genesis [28:10-22] to the... clear historic daylight of the gospel, and we hear Christ renewing the promise...The very heart of Christ’s work was unveiled in the terms of this vision: ‘You shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’ (John 1:51).

So, then, the fleeting vision was a... revelation of a permanent reality, and a faint foreshadowing of the true communication between heaven and earth. Jesus Christ is the ladder between God and man. On Him all divine gifts descend; by Him all the angels of human devotion, consecration, and aspiration go up...

The question of every age... is answered once for all in the incarnate and crucified and ascended Lord, by and in whom all heaven has stooped to earth, that earth might be lifted to heaven. Every child of man, though lonely and earthly, has the ladder-foot by his side...

Jacob’s vision was meant to teach him, and... us, the nearness of God, and the swift directness of communication, whereby His help comes to us and our desires rise to Him. It does us good to have this vision of the eternal realities blazing in upon us...

The seen is but a thin veil of the unseen. Earth, which we are too apt to make a workshop, or a mere garden of pleasure, is a Bethel— a house of God. Everywhere the ladder stands; everywhere the angels go up and down; everywhere the Face looks from the top.

Nothing will save life from becoming, sooner or later, trivial, monotonous, and infinitely wearisome, but the continual vision of the present God, and the continual experience of the swift ascent and descent of our aspirations and His blessings.

~ Alexander MacLaren

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