The Bible is not a Book

James Cathcart September 06, 2026 0 0

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Genesis 28: 10–17 (NIV-uk)

10 Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. 11 When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. 12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it stood the Lord, and he said: ‘I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’

16 When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.’ 17 He was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.’

The Bible is not a book. It’s a place. 

It’s not so much some thing we read as somewhere we go…

The Bible is not a book you read from left to right, it’s a library. You don’t need to start in Genesis. But our two month study on ‘The Bible, Our Library, our Sanctuary’ will begin here. Not Genesis 1:1, but sometime later where Jacob, an outcast and a trickster, a hopeless huckster with only a stone for a pillow, is sleeping beneath a canopy of stars. Like us, he is someone on the way somewhere, in an in-between place, full of questions.

The Bible is not full of people who know all the answers. In fact the opposite would be more accurate. The Bible is a continuous story told over thousands of years, and multiple languages, cultures and genres, of a whole bunch of people with burning questions: who am I? Who is God? How do I live a good life? Why do bad things happen to good people? How do we make a lasting peace? How did we get to here? What’s next? Where should I go? Where are you God?

For us and for them, the answers are often found ‘along the way’ and come with more questions. Jacob’s restless dream changes his perspective on the world and radically changes how humanity in his corner of the world thought about God.

God is not elsewhere. 

God is here. 

In the ancient world gods were often like phone networks — they had areas of stronger and weaker coverage. In some places, like at a temple, you would get three bars reception no problem but the further you went from their people, their home ground, the signal would get patchier until you roamed so far that it dropped entirely. A few thousand years ago you could outrun God.

With Jacob’s angelic escalator dream he sees that heaven and earth aren’t so far apart and God is already in this place: God is profoundly present! Over time the people in the Bible grow to appreciate more and more that God is not remote, that we are closer to heaven than we realise. 

This realisation means God meets us where we are in this moment, we don't have to trek to reach God, and God must care enough about us to be so intimately ‘with’ us. God is not so much a king with a vast empire — but a parent who will cherish us wherever we go, no matter what.

Prayer:

Emanuel ‘God-With-Us',

Travel with us

As we come to the Bible

with open minds

open eyes

and open hearts.

Amen.