When banished Jacob comes, in weariness and darkness, to Luz, he does not find even a but to welcome him, but he finds a stone, rejected of men, waiting for him on the ground: this stone he makes a pillow of in the darkness; and when the light comes he sets it up with a holy anointing as a pillar of testimony and adoration.
We know that Christ is the “Stone disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious.” We know that though to the natural mind it seems a hard and comfortless pillow, the spiritual mind arriving at Luz (separation) finds a sweet repose and a soft pillow in the bosom of Jesus—a pillow of rest first, and then this same Jesus a pillar of witness and worship, anointed with oil—the Holy Ghost. And so Luz becomes Beth-el—the House of God! This is the wanderer's sanctuary: it is not the home bird, “the sparrow hath found an house;” it is the bird of passage, “the swallow that hath a nest for herself where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O Lord of Hosts! “
Amongst the “uses of adversity” one of the most important is that which awakens and discloses sympathy. We frequently hear sympathy when unaccompanied with help spoken slightingly of, but indeed it is a priceless quality under any circumstances. The little boy ran into his father's study, and holding up his hand, with trembling lip and troubled brow, said, “I’se hurted my finger.” “Well, my little man,” replied the philosopher, looking up over his spectacles and keeping his hand on the open page of the De Augmentis, “How can I help you?” The little fellow burst into a flood of tears and ran away.
The gentle mother meeting him, and ascertaining the cause, said, “Well but, my darling, what could your father do?” (She was, however, nestling the child's head on her bosom and kissing the tears away.) The little boy sobbed out, “I thought that he'd say, Oh!” And there is no doubt that to him that word “Oh!” sympathetically uttered would have contained as strange and mysterious a charm as the sacred Oh'm to a Hindu priest.
Thus with Jacob, in many places, but specially here at Luz, in the time of his adversity: God comforts him with gracious words and assuring promises, “Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest I will not leave thee!” When the weary wanderer lays his head on the neglected stone of Luz, what celestial visions shall he not see? what holy words of gracious comfort shall he not hear?