just stones?

At the beginning of the parsha we read that Yaakov took stones and put them around his head as he slept on the road to Charan.  

The gemara (Kes 112) writes that R' Aba used to kiss the stones of Akko when he would come into or out of Eretz Yisrael to express his deep love for the land.  I once heard in the name of Rav Kook that the gemara is telling us that R' Aba loved Eretz Yisrael for its own sake, not just because it is the place where one can do mitzvos ha'teluyos ba'aretz.  You cannot do anything with a stone; it has no value and no utility and nothing grows from a stone.  The only thing that made the stones R' Aba kissed special is that they were part of Eretz Yisrael.  כִּֽי־רָצ֣וּ עֲ֖בָדֶיךָ אֶת־אֲבָנֶ֑יהָ וְאֶת־עֲפָרָ֥הּ יְחֹנֵֽנוּ, the pasuk in Tehillim (102) tells us.  Rashi there quotes the Midrash that when King Yechonya went into galus, he carried with him stones from Eretz Yisrael to use to build a shul in galus.  When one of my kids went to Eretz Yisrsel I did not ask them to bring me a T-shirt or some souvenir from the shuk.  I asked them to bring me a stone from the streets of Yerushalayim.  

Yaakov Avinu is about to leave Eretz Yisrael, to travel to Charan and enter galus, so he pauses on the border, and on his last night in Eretz Yisrael, he gathers its stones around his head to embrace his homeland one final time.

While he sleeps, Yaakov has a vision and he finds himself standing in the "Beis Elokim," the makom mikdash.  Chazal tell us that even though Yaakov was geographically far from Yerushalayim, he experienced קפיצת הארץ.  The Sefas Emes (5640) explains that there is kefitza in time as well as in space.  There was not yet a Beis haMikdash for Yaakov to see; there was merely a barren, empty place.  However, because of his great love for Eretz Yisrael, Yaakov was zocheh to see the land not as it was at that moment, but as it would be in the future, when there would in fact be a Mikdash.  The Midrash writes  מְלַמֵּד שֶׁהֶרְאָה הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא לְיַעֲקֹב בֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ בָּנוּי וְחָרֵב וּבָנוּי.  Jewish history unfolded before him: the story of Eretz Yisrael's settlement, the tragedy of churban, and then reconstruction and return.  

Some people look at Eretz Yisrael with all its problems and just see rocks and stones, obstacles and difficulties.  However, if you are willing to bend down and embrace those stones, you will maybe catch a glimpse of much more, a glimpse of the future, of the land's potential, of the makom mikdash waiting to be built.