Adult Bible Study October 14, 2007

Lesson Text: Genesis 28:10-22
By Melanie Zuercher
E-mail: mz606@cox.net

“When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place. . . .’ 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.’. . .  He called that place Bethel” Genesis 28:16-17, 19a NIV.

Every Wednesday evening during the school year, students at Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas, meet in the Administration Building chapel to sing from Hymnal: A Worship Book (Mennonite Publishing Network, 1992). They’ve been doing this for a number of years. And they end every gathering with HWB 560, “In Lonely Mountain Ways.”

The hymn text is by Sugao Nishimura (1871–1964), the founding principal of a school in his hometown of Matsuyama, Japan. He began the school to give children who were forced to work during the day and couldn’t attend regular school a chance to get an education. Nishimura became a Christian as a young man. The hymn’s translator, Paul Gregory, who served as a missionary in Japan for nine years, wrote, “Nishimura’s glowing faith influenced countless young people.”

The text is based on the Genesis 28 story of Jacob, who in the midst of a long journey lay down to sleep one night and, resting his head on a stone, dreamed of a stairway full of angels. It most likely is the closing song for Bethel student hymn sings because of the final verse: “And though when evening falls, a stone my pillow shapes, the vision of our kingdom calls and here a Bethel makes.”

But for these students it is far more than a play on words. A couple of years ago, one student wrote about how the hymn, which she had learned about from her older sister, made her feel at home when she arrived at Bethel College as a first-year student. Its words comforted her when she was far from home and friends when she studied for a semester in Budapest. “This song is a reminder of the transcendent that I have found at Bethel [College], this ‘house of God,’” she wrote, “and an assurance that it is not tied only to this time and place.”

It didn’t take much digging to show that this hymn—like many—is also transcendent, that there is more to it than meets the eye or the ear. Poet Sugao Nishimura’s journey was one of service, more than six decades of it, to underprivileged children. Jacob’s journey, as this week’s examination of the text shows, was more than the miles covered from Beersheba to Haran. His journey was to a living relationship with God.