Lenten Voices: Stairway to Heaven

What’s your favourite version? The original Led Zepplin leads in Google hits. The lyrics are most evocative as we contemplate the Lenten journey – for on such a road we are often confronted with choices between the tantalising and immediate and the deeper and more reliable. Which is the true stairway to heaven? The image is based on Genesis 28:10-17. Jacob’s dream of a “stairway to heaven” interrupts his journey of choices. It will take a lifetime of pursuit of riches and power that leads him to a night of transformational wrestling that leads him to further choices. Maybe the “stairway to heaven” is part of the landscape of the Lenten journey to the self-giving of the cross and beyond.