The Story

Jacob had to leave home. His brother Esau was angry with him, so Isaac blessed Jacob and sent him on the long journey to Padanaram, to his mother's family, to find a wife there. Jacob set out from Beersheba and walked toward Haran, all alone.

After a long day of walking, the sun went down, and Jacob had to stop for the night in an open place with no house and no bed. He took some stones of that place and put them for his pillows, and he lay down to sleep under the wide night sky. It must have felt lonely — far from home, far from his mother, with nothing but stones for a pillow.

But then Jacob dreamed — a dream unlike any other. He saw "a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven". Up and down the ladder went the angels of God, and above it stood the LORD Himself. And God spoke to Jacob. He told him, "I am the LORD God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac". God promised Jacob the land he was lying on, promised that his descendants would spread out to the west and the east and the north and the south, and promised that through his family all the families of the earth would be blessed — the very same promises God had made to Abraham and Isaac!

Then God gave Jacob a promise just for himself — the promise in our memory verse. God would be with him. God would keep him in every place he went. God would bring him back home again. God would never leave him until every word was done.

Jacob woke up out of his sleep, and the lonely place did not feel lonely anymore. He said, "Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not." Jacob felt the wonder of it: "this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven." Early in the morning he took the stone that had been his pillow, set it up as a pillar, and poured oil on top of it, and he called the place Bethel — the house of God. Then Jacob made a vow to the God who had promised never to leave him, and he went on his way — alone on the road, but never truly alone again.