Surely He Was Here and She Did Not Know It

The screen door has a spring on it that lets go about two inches early, so it does not shut, it announces itself, and every soul in the county knows that sound.

Crossroads store. Four aisles, a chest freezer, a bench out front, a hand written sign about the peaches that has been up since Tuesday and the peaches are nearly gone. Late afternoon and the light has come round to the good side of the building.

Her people have run this store a long time. She has run it herself for a long time inside that.

And here is what she has come to think about this place, and she has never said it in front of anybody. She thinks God went past. Not that He is angry with it. Just that whatever He is doing in the world, He is doing it in the cities and the mission fields and the places where things happen, and this is four aisles and a bench and a road with nothing much on it.

She prays for people. She would tell you she believes every word of it. But if you asked her whether she expects anything of God at this crossroads, she would go quiet, because the honest answer is no, and she has thought that for a long time.

Come sit on the bench, honey. Because there is a man in Genesis who lay down in the emptiest place in the story with a rock for a pillow, and I want you to hear what he said in the morning.

He said it out loud when he woke up

Jacob is running. He has done something bad enough that his brother wants him dead, and he is going north on his own with nothing.

The sun goes down. He is nowhere. He picks up a stone and puts it under his head and goes to sleep in the open, which is what a man does when there is no house and no plan.

And then the ladder, and the angels, and the Lord standing above it and speaking. And then this.

And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.Genesis 28:16

Two halves of one sentence, and hold both.

Surely the Lord is in this place. Present tense. He is here, now, in this specific nowhere with the rock in it.

And I knew it not. Which means He was here before Jacob knew, and Jacob's not knowing did not make Him any less here.

You are standing in a place He is already in, and Jacob's not knowing it never once made it less true of the ground he was lying on. That is not a hopeful reading of an old story; Genesis 28:16 puts both halves in one sentence on purpose, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes an empty stretch of country in Canaan and lays it over a crossroads with a screen door that will not shut. He did not go past this place. You have simply not known it.

Now let me say the second half, and I want to be plain about it.

You made a judgement about where God works, and you made it by looking at scale. Cities, mission fields, places where things happen. And there is a whole way of thinking about God underneath that, and it comes from us and not from Him.

Because look at where He actually turns up in that book. A well in the desert with one used up woman at it. A field with a boy in it who is too young to be considered. A stable behind an inn in a town so small the prophet had to specify it was little among the thousands of Judah (Micah 5:2). A crossroads is not too small for God. There is no such thing as too small for God.

You have been measuring by a scale He has never used, and He has a documented habit of turning up in places nobody would have chosen. Micah 5:2 calls Bethlehem little among the thousands and then says the ruler comes out of it, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that a fact about a store on a country road rather than a fact about Christmas.

What Jacob did next, which is not what you expect

One more thing, because it is practical.

He does not go somewhere better. He does not conclude that he has found the one holy spot and set up permanently.

He takes the stone he had under his head, sets it up, and calls the place Bethel, house of God. He marks it. And then he carries on north in the morning, to the ordinary rest of his life, having named an ordinary patch of ground as somewhere God had been.

The naming is the whole action. Not a relocation. A recognition, said out loud, over the ground he was already on.

You have the same thing available to you at this counter, and naming it out loud is the entire action being asked of you. Psalm 118:24 says this is the day the Lord hath made, which is a naming and not a discovery, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a spoken sentence do real work in a person rather than a feeling that has to be waited for.

And here is the last piece, because you have a mouth and it does more than sell peaches.

Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 that faith the size of a mustard seed, spoken to a mountain, is enough to move it. The smallest seed a woman ever put in the ground. Not the size of the town you are standing in. That a person opens their mouth and says what God has said. You have that standing because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and speaking is the appointed way this works. We flip the switch. He sends the current.