Vayetze- Seeing God in the everyday

¹⁰“And Jacob went out from Beer Sheva and went toward Haran.  ¹¹And he arrived in the place, and stayed there because the sun had gone, and he took one of stones from the place and he put it under his head and lay down in that place.  ¹²And he dreamed, and he beheld a ladder set on the earth and its top reached the heavens, and he beheld angels of God going up and coming down on it.  ¹³And here was Hashem standing beside him, and he said, “I am Hashem, the God of Avraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie, to you I will give it and to your descendents.  ¹⁴Your seed will be like the dust of the earth and spread to the west, the east, to the north, and the south of this land and all the families of the land will be blessed by your seed.  ¹⁵Behold I am with you and will guard you everywhere you go, and I will bring your back to this land because I will not leave you until I have done that which I said to you.”  ¹⁶And Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely, Hashem is in this place, and I, I did not know it.”

In 1998 Rav Sean and I moved to Hawaii.  After a long flight with a toddler, we deplaned late at night, hustled into a cab, and headed to a hotel.  Our hotel room was innocuous, like almost every other hotel room.  We fell into bed, simply glad of a place to lay our heads.  In the morning, shortly before dawn, we awoke, jet-lagged and still on eastern standard time.  To avoid waking Jesse, we sat on the lanai (aka balcony), huddled against the pre-dawn chill.  Suddenly the sun rose above the mountains, like a lunar sunrise, the peaks alight with fire.  Rav Sean turned to me and said, “Now I know where God lives.” I would soon discover though that when you spend your days going to work, volunteer, the market and pre-school, that life even where God lives looks like life anywhere. 

How often can we stand somewhere that just looks just like any other place?  Then, suddenly we are hit with the feeling we are not alone, that theirs is something significant in that place beyond us.  Maybe it’s an avoided accident or averted problem.  Whatever it is, we have the feeling that we are not alone in the world.

God comes to Jacob when he most needs it.  In that moment, fleeing from home, angry and alone, perhaps even Jacob did not realize his need.  Once he lets his guard down, relaxes during sleep, Jacob is conscious of God’s presence.  “I is in this place, and I, I did not know it.” Even in Hawaii I had to remember to look up to see the rainbows.  Sometimes feeling God’s presence in our lives is just a matter of opening ourselves up, letting our guard down, looking around and being willing to believe.