Thursday 12 November 2026

Psalm 22:19-31

Background
Jacob leaves home carrying a blessing gained through deceit. Our reading today finds him at dusk, exposed on the road between Beer-sheba and Haran. He is neither a secure heir nor a welcomed guest, but a displaced traveller with a stone for a pillow. He dreams of a stairway joining earth and heaven. Angels move along it, but the decisive movement is God’s. The God of Abraham stands beside Jacob and renews the promise that all the families of the earth will be blessed. This is astonishing grace, but it is not approval of Jacob’s actions. God meets Jacob before he has repaired the harm done to Esau, yet divine faithfulness does not make human deceit right. Instead, the promise gives Jacob a responsibility. A blessing intended for every family cannot be kept as private advantage. God’s promise, “I am with you”, accompanies him into a future where he must face exploitation, estrangement and the claims of the brother he wronged.

Jacob wakes and cries, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it.” (v. 16) He had treated the ground as nowhere, a place to pass through, but God names it differently: it is Bethel, the house of God and the gate of heaven. God is not confined to secure households or places controlled by powerful people. The wilderness of displaced people is holy ground. Flourishing begins when places and people dismissed as peripheral are recognised as bearing God’s presence.

Psalm 22:19-31 has a desperate plea: come near, rescue, deliver. God’s answer does not end with a single sufferer’s survival. Praise gathers a congregation; the poor eat and are satisfied; the ends of the earth turn towards God; generations not yet born receive the story. Biblical flourishing has a public shape. It is measured by whether the afflicted are heard, the hungry are fed and those pushed to the edges are welcomed into worship, memory and hope.

The hymn for today 'O God of Bethel' (Singing the Faith 475) makes that movement from encounter with God to shared life explicit. Its vision of God’s love flowing through ordinary lives belongs beside Jacob’s awakening: we are called to let grace travel through our words, choices, relationships and use of resources. The hymn will not allow Bethel to remain a private spiritual moment. If divine love is to be seen in the world, it must take flesh in welcome, generosity, truth-telling and solidarity with people whose dignity has been denied.

It also sharpens the meaning of flourishing. Love does not flow only towards those already secure but moves towards the afflicted, the hungry and those pushed to the edges. Praise becomes credible when people are heard, food is shared, barriers are removed and those once treated as outsiders help shape the community.

Together, the readings and hymn challenge churches to ask who is missing from our picture of abundance. Attendance, income, buildings and influence can grow while people remain unheard, spaces remain inaccessible and decision-making stays in familiar hands. That is not the flourishing imagined by the psalm or today's hymn. God’s abundance is revealed when people living in poverty have enough to eat, when people treated as outsiders help shape the community, and when class, ethnicity, sexuality or age no longer determine whose gifts are trusted.

Jacob raises his stone as a pillar and promises a tenth to God. (v. 22) Encounter becomes material commitment, and so must ours. To flourish under the God of Abraham is to turn welcome from a slogan into justice. We must listen to people harmed by exclusion, share money and authority, challenge hostile symbols and speech, and make buildings, worship and leadership genuinely accessible. Inclusion is not asking others to fit around an unchanged centre. It is discovering that God has already made a home among people we have kept at the margins. Will we remove the gates that still block our neighbours?

To Ponder:

• Where might God already be present in a person, place or experience I have dismissed as peripheral, and what would I need to change in order to recognise and honour that holy ground?
• If we measured our flourishing by whether people at the margins are heard, participate and are trusted with power, what would our Church need to do differently?

Prayer
Faithful God of Abraham, meet us on the road and open our eyes to your presence among those whom we have overlooked or pushed to the margins. Turn your promise into justice and teach us to share our money, places and power so that all may flourish. Make your Church a true Bethel, where every person belongs, every gift is welcomed and no gate bars the way to your abundant life. Amen.

Bible notes author: The Revd Dr Adrian Burdon
The Revd Dr Adrian Burdon is Superintendent Minister of the Telford Circuit in the West Midlands District and Moderator of Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. Adrian has been a presbyter since 1988. In addition to serving in Shropshire, Adrian has worked in the Oldham Circuit, on the Fylde Coast, in Leeds city centre and north-east England, and as a mission partner in the South Pacific.