“And he took one of the stones of that place and put it at his head, and he lay down in that place to sleep.” Gen 28:11b “Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it." Gen 28:16
Jacob was on a journey out of obedience to his father when one night, as the sun had set, he tried to find rest on a pile of rocks. Can you imagine the difficulty?
Yet, have YOU ever come to a time when the "light" of God's path seemed to have disappeared, “darkness” came, and since you couldn't continue forward, you tried to find rest but it was far from comfortable? Jacob did not see that it was in that formidable place that the LORD was with him, just as He had been his entire journey. Darkness and light are the same to God (Ps. 139:12), though it can seem very different to us. But our God will be faithful to reveal Himself to us and we will say, "Surely, the LORD is in this place!" though we did not know it.
Once Jacob woke up to that realization, those stones were immediately converted into an altar of praise and worship. Verse 18 says "And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it." When we are unaware of the Lord being with us, the hard things we try and rest upon can be very difficult...even painful. But when we find that Jesus is our Rock (Dt. 32), He has become our "rest" (Heb. 4), and this Rock was "anointed with the oil of gladness (Ps. 45:7), then we discover that there is no stone of difficulty that cannot be turned into an altar of praise and worship. Gen 28:15 "Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.”
