Genesis 28:12

They were people who were living to themselves. Their hopes, promises, and dreams still controlled them, but the Lord began to fulfill their prayers.

They had asked for a repentant heart and had surrendered themselves with a willingness to pay any price for it, and He sent them sorrow. They had asked for purity, and He sent them sudden anguish. They had asked for meekness, and He had broken their hearts. They had asked to be dead to the world, and He killed all their living hopes. They had asked to be made like Him, so He placed them in the fire “as a refiner and purifier of silver” (Malachi 3:3), until they could reflect His image. They had asked to help carry His cross, yet when He held it out to them, it cut and tore their hands.

We should remember that John wrote these words while on the island of Patmos. He was there “because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (Revelation 1:9). He had been banished to this island, which was an isolated, rocky, and inhospitable prison. Yet it was here, under difficult circumstances—separated from all his loved ones in Ephesus, excluded from worshiping with the church, and condemned to only the companionship of unpleasant fellow captives—that he was granted this vision as a special privilege. It was as a prisoner that he saw “a door standing open in heaven.”

We should also remember Jacob, who laid down in the desert to sleep after leaving his father’s house. “He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and . . . above it stood the LORD” (Genesis 28:12–13).

The vision of the Angel of the Lord came to Moses while he was involved in his everyday work. That is exactly where the Lord delights in giving His revelations. He seeks a man traveling an ordinary road, and “suddenly a light from heaven” (Acts 9:3) shines on him. And a “stairway resting on the earth” (Genesis 28:12) can reach from the marketplace to heaven, transforming a life from one of drudgery to one of grace.

Beloved Father, help me to expect you as I travel the ordinary road of life. I am not asking for sensational experiences. Fellowship with me through my everyday work and service, and be my companion when I take an ordinary journey. And let my humble life be transformed by Your presence.