Taking Dreams Seriously
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Friday, September 29, 2023
Genesis 28:10-17 (Forward, p. 62) CEV p. 27
Modern day psychiatrists, especially those from a Freudian or Jungian background, often see dreams as vestiges of unresolved inner traumas or issues or as the out-workings of that person’s experiences. They take dreams seriously—but only to a point.
The ancient world, the Biblical world, took dreams much more seriously, all the more so perhaps, because they didn’t appear to anything related to that person’s psyche or past. Many of them seem to appear entirely ‘out of the blue’. Just think of the dreams of Joseph (of the coat of many colours fame) for instance, or Joseph of Nazareth, the husband of the Virgin Mary, and the apostle Paul with his dream of a man imploring him to come over to Macedonia. None of them appear to have even the slightest connection to what has gone on previously.
Such is today’s dream, the one that Jacob had at Bethel. There is no clue at all why he might have been thinking of heaven—much less a stairway leading to and from and populated by angels. Now, as for the message from God that came as part of this dream, it has amazing parallels with what God had already promised Abraham (see Genesis 12:1-3, for instance.) However, we don’t hear of Jacob himself having any encounters with God or messages from God. The most we hear of is solely second hand, as when his father Isaac prays a blessing over him (see Genesis 28:3-4).
So, here God is clearly the initiator, the instigator, of something new, and more particularly, something new in Jacob’s life. Up until now, he has ‘been in charge’, often disastrously so, so now God intervenes and sets a course correction for Jacob’s affairs. And, understandably, Jacob is more than just ‘impressed’; he is surprised and more than a wee bit frightened by this encounter and decides to worship God and let God be God in his life (see verses 20-22). But even here, he tries to set terms and conditions upon his relationship with God. Oh when, when will he ever learn?
Most of us don’t encounter God quite so directly, by dreams for instance, but even so, there are definitely ways that He does speak to us and direct us: through the Scriptures, perhaps, through prayer, through experience,
and through our interactions with other people, especially believers. But do we listen? And do we, like Jacob, try to play games with God, and set out our own terms and conditions, which will never ever ‘work’, at least when it comes to God? Certainly, we need to take God’s word to us seriously, whether it comes in the form of dreams, or not.
Forward notes: “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you” (verse 15).
“What a promise to receive from God! Three times in the same sentence, God tells Jacob that God is here to stay in Jacob’s life: ‘I am with you’, ‘[I] will keep you,’ ‘I will not leave you.’ Two verses earlier, we encounter Jacob’s vision of the Lord standing beside him.
“God’s presence in Jacob’s dream seems intimate to me. The scene reminds me of a quote from Meister Eckhart in his sermon, ‘The Nearness of the Kingdom’: ‘God is nearer to me than I am to myself.’ The God who has entered Jacob’s dream has already been with Jacob, nearer than Jacob may have realized, and wants to stay by his side. God displays a love for Jacob that rings with unfailing devotion and intimate openness.
“God is great, powerful, and glorious, but sometimes I need to meet God as Jacob met God. A God ‘nearer to me than I am to myself.’ A God will tell me three times to make sure I get it: ‘I am with you.’”
Moving Forward: “As you go about your day, remember that God is standing with you.”
A concluding note: And as you remember this story of God’s initiative in choosing and using Jacob that he in no wise deserved or merited this goodness on the part of God. Indeed, up until this point in time, he had been thoroughly a rotter, a scoundrel and a cheat. But then, isn’t it wonderful that God doesn’t wait for us ‘to clean up our act’ as a condition to loving us! Thanks be to God.