Genesis 28:10-22 / Matthew 9:18-26
The circumstances that led Jacob to leave Beersheba for Haran,that we heard in the 1st reading, was far from anything exciting or adventurous.
With the help of his mother Rebekah, Jacob was actually fleeing from his brother Esau, from whom he stole the birthright and blessings.
And if we bother to read the whole story, then we will see that there was a lot of cheating, manipulating, lying and deception.
Nothing very edifying about all this and we might even wonder why it was recorded in sacred scripture in the first place.
And neither was that place that Jacob stopped over for the night had anything special about it.
But yet it was there that God showed Himself to Jacob.
We can reflect deeper on what Jacob exclaimed : Truly the Lord is in this place and I never knew it!
And as far as we are concerned, the places that we find ourselves in are certainly nothing special, and our situations and circumstances are far from edifying or motivating.
As it was in the case of the official and the woman suffering from hemorrhage that we heard about in the gospel.
But they had the faith to believe that God was there in their situations.
Indeed God is with us in the ordinary places that we are in and God is certainly with us in the adverse situations of life.
May we, like Jacob, also realize that God is here with us, and that He is always with us till the end of time.