I can still remember the snakes and ladders board that I had when I was young. It was not so much the board as the snake that went from no.97 down to no.3! It was a heartbreaker for a young chap to hit that beast and slide all the way from impending success and glory to utter defeat. How cruel life could be!

 

Jacob didn’t have the same problem with snakes. It was finding a way, as the younger of twins, to obtain his father’s blessing. Isaac had taken himself prematurely to his death bed. Calling Esau to him, he requested that he as the hunter gatherer of the family and the son that he loved, go and capture a young kid and prepare it in the way he liked, in order then to give him God’s blessing. With the help of his mother and some nifty cooking and cunning disguise Jacob cheated his brother and received the blessing that wasn’t really his.

 

Fleeing for his life Jacob journeys away from home. At a place called Luz he sleeps for the night in the open. During the night he dreams. He sees a ladder stretching from earth to heaven with angels ascending and descending on it. Then God speaks to him. Jacob calls the place Bethel which means the ‘house of God’ and he begins the process of being changed.

 

God so often turns the ordinary into the extraordinary. He turns the everyday into the heavenly day. A friend of mine is a window cleaner. He spends much of his time up a ladder. It is an ordinary ladder and with ordinary water he washes ordinary windows of regular people. One day he had an encounter with God whilst up his ladder and his life was transformed. He is now different in so many ways.

 

May we to know the transforming love of God during the ordinary days of our lives.