Jacob was a deceiver on the run the night he found this out — a con man with a death threat behind him and nowhere to sleep but open ground, with a stone for a pillow. Nowhere in particular, as far as he could tell. And there, of all places, heaven stood open: a ladder set up on the earth, and the Lord standing over him — speaking promise, not reprimand. I am with you, and will keep you wherever you go. The runaway was met, not scolded. That is grace, and it found him asleep.

He woke and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” Then he stood his stone pillow up as a pillar and named the ordinary ground Bethel — house of God, gate of heaven.

Centuries later Jesus borrowed the dream and named Himself the ladder: the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. The gate of heaven is not a place. It is a Person. That is why ordinary ground keeps turning out to be thinner than it looks.

Somebody stood a few foothill stones into walls here and called it Bethel. This chapel is our stone — set up in ordinary ground to say: God was here, and we noticed.