Are you a dreamer? You know the kind of dream you see and experience when you’re deep in sleep. I can’t remember the last time I had a dream. As kids our dreams are active and filled with color and excitement. Sometimes those dreams turn dark and fill with scary images – we call those nightmares. But they’re still dreams. 

I know what you’re thinking this is an advent devotion and I’m reading it with my kids. What is he doing talking about nightmares!?! You got me. Advent isn’t about nightmares at all actually, but it is about the unexpected. 

Remember how this week is all about God showing up in unexpected places? Well today’s place is in dreams. There’s a story in the Bible about a man named Jacob. He had a dream one day of a huge ladder that reached all the way to heaven. Who sat atop this ladder? Yep! You guessed it – God. 

Jacob didn’t lay down to take a nap because he thought he’d see God. He slept because he was tired. You know just like we sleep when we’re tired. But the cool part here is that God showed up in Jacob’s dream! 

The point here is all about God showing up in the most unexpected of places. Some of those places are not places we’d ever expect Jesus to show up. I mean a small town in the middle of nowhere Israel? A whisper in the side of a cliff? A dream a guy has laying on a rock? 

Take time today to look for God in those unexpected places. 

Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. 12 And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! 13 And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. Genesis 28:11-13