DAILY BYTEThere is one final joyful discovery about calling this story teaches us. Lonely little Jacob, now exiled from his family and homeland, is given an amazing promise. That God would bless him to be a blessing, and that he would leave behind an amazing legacy through his descendants.
“Your descendants will be like the DUST of the earth.” The word used for dust actually means ‘rich topsoil.’ Jacob is promised that those who come after him will be like this fertile topsoil that much life and beauty would spring out of.
Know this then: CALLINGS DON’T RELY ON US BEING GREAT, JUST ON US RELYING GREATLY ON A GREAT GOD!
Tony Campolo tells the story of visiting some schools in Haiti that his organisation runs. On the way to back to his hotel, he was intercepted by 3 young girls, the oldest of whom was no more than 15. She said to him:
“Mister, for $10 I do anything you want me to do. I’ll do it all night long. Do you know what I mean?”
Yes, he knew what she meant. Campolo turned to the next one and said, “What about you, can I have you for $10 as well?”
“Yes,” she replied.
He turned to the last one and asked the same thing. She tried to mask her contempt of him with a smile, but its hard to look sexy when you are only 15 and hungry. Campolo said to them, “I’m in room 210. You be there in just 10 minutes. I have $30 and I am going to pay for all 3 of you to be with me all night long.”
Campolo rushed up to his room, and called down to the front desk to order every Walt Disney video they had. Then he called the restaurant and ordered 4 banana splits with extra ice-cream. The little girls arrived at his room, as did the ice cream and the videos, and they all sat on the edge of the bed and they watched and laughed until about 1am. That is when the last of the 3 girls fell asleep.
Campolo relates that as he saw these 3 young girls stretched out across his bed, he thought to himself:
“But nothing’s changed, nothing’s changed. Tomorrow they will be back on the streets selling their little bodies to dirty, filthy johns because there will always be dirty, filthy johns who for a few dollars will destroy little girls. Nothing’s changed. And I don’t even know enough Creole to tell them the salvation story.”
But then the word of the Spirit spoke into Campolo’s heart and said:
“But for one night Tony, for one night you let them be little girls again.”
God has this wonderful way of taking our tiny, little offerings and efforts and dreams and hopes and making them more, making them enough. Every time we perform an act of love in God’s name, no matter how small and senseless it seems against the great tide of evil, every time we do so, we capture God’s dream and vision for us, we live out our calling and we do the work of Jesus.
Jacob’s vision of angels descending and ascending the ladder between heaven and earth is a powerful reminder to open our eyes to the numerous heavenly possibilities in life. That when we dream God’s dreams, obey his callings, and take on even the smallest of Jesus’ characteristics then we bring something of what is up there to down here.
Heaven descends into our lives, and we in turn are lifted up into something higher, something more. By following your life’s calling you are bringing little bits of heaven to earth!
So may this story of Jacob be a joyous and surprising reminder that your life IS meant to mean something quite wonderful, and that as unlikely as it sounds, within you lies the potential to change entire lives and worlds.
As God has called you to be, may it be so.
PRAY AS YOU GO
Lord God, thank you for the wonderful way you take the small, ordinary offering of our lives and you imbue them with heavenly wonders. Help us to be faithful to our life’s calling, and in this way to bring something of heaven here to earth. Amen.
FOCUS READING
Genesis 28. 14-16 NRSV
Jacob dreamed that there was a ladder set up on earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the Lord stood beside him said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring.
