Heaven on earth

This week’s story from the Hebrew Scriptures is about a man on the run. Jacob is fleeing from his brother Esau who he tricked out of his birthright. He’s running scared and living rough. But he is not able to run from God.

He wakes from a dream and says “Surely God was in this place, and I did not know it!” In the most unlikeliest of places, and on the run, the surprising mystic Jacob the Trickster, finds himself in a thin place where heaven and earth are joined and angels ascend and descend on a ladder to the heavens.

It is interesting to note that the angels “ascend” to heaven.  But Earth is filled with divinity.  Earth has its own angels.  God is not far off or trapped in some remote heaven in the sky. Divinity is on earth as it is in heaven.  You don’t need to go to heaven to find God; heaven is in this place.

The world is chock full of divinity.  You can encounter the holy in the most unlikely places.  Thin places, joining heaven and earth, abound for those for whom the doors of perception have opened.

Life is messy, but it can be spiritually full in all its complexity when we open our senses to divinity within and beyond us.

God is in all things, and all things are in God!