One Minute Lessons from The Torah: Vayetze

I’m back for another Instagram One Minute Lesson from the Torah. At the beginning of this week’s Torah portion, Vayetzei, Jacob camps for the night and rests his head on a stone. He dreams of a ladder planted in the earth stretching up to heaven, with angels ascending and descending constantly.
I see the angels as a metaphor for how we pray. Our prayers start here on earth and then flow upward to God, and God’s attention and love and blessing flow back to us.
When Jacob awakes from his dream he cries out “Truly, God is in this place, and I — I did not know it!”
We are often reminded about the awesomeness God in the spectacular moments in our lives and those truly are moments when we may find ourselves especially open to connection with God
But it’s also possible to experience God’s presence in mundane everyday moments our lives. And we can exclaim Truly, God is in this place,
Wherever we go in life god is with us but sometimes life gets in the way and we do not realize that God is very much a part of our lives. This torah portion says that God is with us all the time and all we have to do is be in the moment and be aware and when we do that we open our hearts and our minds to the presents of God.