Our Old Testament lesson this Sunday is Genesis 28:10-19, but I encourage you to read all the way through verse 22 to get the full picture. It is the story of Jacob’s Dream and what a fantastical dream it is. As a side note, it is a wonder that Jacob slept at all that night. We are told that he had had a stone pillow. In musical terms, if this story were a song, the title might be 'Put Your Head on My Boulder'.

And yet it turns out Stone Pillows were a thing, dating back to Mesopotamia some 9,000 years ago. Comfort was not their purpose. People learned that without something to prop up your head you would get serious neck aches in the morning. More importantly, even if it was a rock, wilderness sleepers wanted to use nature’s headrests to elevate so they didn’t have bugs and creepy things from the ground directly crawling on them.

God gives Jacob a stone for a pillow. Jacob, alone at night with only a stone for a pillow. On the pillow, then, a vision. Angels ascending and descending a ladder to and from the heavens.

-Anonymous Midrash on Genesis 28:11

Jewish Poet Doris Ferleger writes:

Dear God of Abandoned Hope,

I entreat You, may I feel each stone You place

under my head as a bolster of bright brocade.

May my castle of straw be comely to me.

May You place my bed on the ground

of embodied knowledge. My sometimes-stone

heart, may it soften, forgive my judging mind.

May I be enamored of missteps, mistakes,

lessons hewn from stoneheartedness...

And when You, Dear God

extinguish the sun...

May I connect to the closed heart from a place

of belonging. May I know I am a beam

of Your precious light. I am ladder and rung,

cloud and rock at the same time.

I am this place. I call Your name.

See you on Sunday & blessings on your week,

Father Tom

Tags: faith, message, sunday service