But in idolizing the past we keep the present locked in amber, always yearning for something different in the opposite direction of where God is calling us. The Good News for a human condition inclined to idolize the past and sentimentalize the present is that once the Israelites reached their promise to Abraham, the promise didn't stop.

Each of us, in one way or another, participates in systems that prize performance over mercy filling forms, meeting targets, curating images, translating our worth into metrics. And that is the human condition revealed in this text: we take God’s truth and intention for us and turn them into instruments of control: our truth, our standard, our measure for others.

Just as the angels descended and ascended on the stairway to heaven in Jacob’s dream, Jesus is saying he is the ladder—the link between heaven and earth. Through Jesus, the disciples will come to see the glory of God and experience God’s revelation, a fulfillment of God’s promise to Jacob that we would all be blessed in his offspring by bringing us Jesus.