Climbing Higher

There is something deeply human about the desire to climb. We climb career ladders, social ladders, ladders of achievement and ambition. We use the language of ascending almost instinctively when we talk about progress, success, and moving forward in life. But what if the most important ladder we will ever encounter is not one we build ourselves? What if the ladder that truly matters is one that God places before us, reaching from wherever we stand all the way into heaven?

That is precisely the picture painted in one of the most striking moments in the book of Genesis. In Genesis 28:10-22, a man named Jacob falls asleep in the wilderness with a stone for a pillow, and he dreams of a stairway connecting earth to heaven, with angels ascending and descending upon it, and God himself standing at the top. It is a vision that has captured the imagination of readers for thousands of years, and its message is just as urgent and alive today as it was the night Jacob first received it.

Jacob was not exactly a model citizen when this dream came to him. He was a deceiver, a manipulator, a man who had stolen his brother's inheritance through trickery and his father's blessing through outright deception. He was on the run, cut off from everything familiar, with nothing but the wilderness around him and a rock beneath his head. By any measure, he had hit rock bottom.

And yet it was precisely there, in that low and desolate place, that Jacob encountered God for the first time in his life.

This is one of the most encouraging truths the story offers. The ladder reaches that low. God does not wait for us to clean ourselves up or climb partway on our own before he shows up. He meets us in our wilderness, in our failure, in our darkest nights. Many people find that it is only when everything else has been stripped away that they finally become quiet enough to hear what God has been saying all along. If you are in a low place today, that is not a sign that God has abandoned you. It may be the very place where he has been patiently waiting for your attention.

One of the most important details in this story is what the staircase represents. Ancient cultures built massive temple structures called ziggurats, towering staircases meant to be places where heaven and earth would meet. They were monuments to human religious striving, humanity's attempt to reach up and touch the divine through its own effort and ingenuity.

Jacob's staircase is a deliberate contrast to that kind of thinking. It is not something humanity constructs. God provides it. And this stands in sharp opposition to the Tower of Babel described earlier in Genesis, where people attempted to build a tower that would reach heaven to make a name for themselves. That project ended in confusion and scattering. Human pride has always wanted to achieve a God-like status through its own power, and history keeps showing us that it does not work.

Today, that impulse has not disappeared. It has simply found new expressions. Technology, artificial intelligence, scientific advancement– all of these are remarkable gifts. Still, they are also places where humanity is tempted to believe it can manufacture meaning, purpose, and even immortality on its own terms. The story of Jacob's ladder quietly challenges that assumption. Any staircase we build to reach God will fall short. The only way up is the one God himself provides.

And that is exactly what Jesus claimed to be. In John 1:51, he told his disciples they would see angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man, a direct echo of Jacob's dream. He was saying plainly, "I am the ladder." I am the connection between earth and heaven. That is why he could say in John 14:6 that he is the way, the truth, and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through him. Faith in Christ is not just a religious decision. It is placing your foot on the first rung of the only ladder that actually reaches the top.

Jacob did not wake up from his dream as a finished product. He woke up as someone who had encountered God, now beginning a journey of transformation. And that is exactly what the Christian life looks like. It is not a single moment of arrival. It is a lifelong climb, rung by rung, step by step, growing more and more into the image of Christ.

The apostle Paul describes this process in 2 Corinthians 3:18, writing that those who follow Christ are being transformed into his image from glory to glory, through the work of the Holy Spirit. The goal of the journey is to become like Christ. The question worth asking is not whether you have already arrived. The better question is whether you are still climbing.

Jacob's response after his dream gives us a practical picture of what climbing actually looks like. He set up a place of worship and called it Bethel, meaning the house of God. He committed to trusting God with his daily needs. And he pledged to give back a tenth of everything he received, recognizing that what he had ultimately belonged to God.

These three things–worship and prayer, faithful trust, and generosity–are not complicated but transformative. They keep us from getting stuck. Regular prayer and worship create the kind of Bethel in our own lives where we encounter God consistently. Trusting God with our needs shifts us from anxiety-driven striving to faith-filled living. And generosity breaks the grip that material things can have on our hearts, keeping wealth a blessing rather than a burden.

The ladder is real. It reaches all the way down to wherever you are standing. The only question left is whether you are climbing.