Did you wrestle with God today?
In the book of Genesis, Jacob - literally the father of Israel - wrestles during the night with someone who turns out to be God in human form. The wrestler Jacob meets can’t seem to defeat him, so they put his hip out of joint. Still Jacob won’t let go until the other figure blesses him. When they do, they say that Jacob has “striven with God and with humans” and Jacob realizes that he’s “seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved.” You can read this part of Jacob’s story in Genesis 32:22-31. The whole story of Jacob in chapters 25-49. It’s worth a read.
This story isn’t just about the moment and the reaffirmation of Jacob’s role in the bigger story of Israel, it’s about Jacob’s life and our lives, too.
Jacob’s life isn’t easy. There are struggles, sometimes with himself, sometimes with God. Sometimes of his own making and sometimes how others - and life in general - treat him. But it’s his life.
Sometimes, like in this moment, those struggles yield obvious blessings. Sometimes the blessing may simply be hidden in how his story is advanced. But these struggles leave a mark or an imprint, too, impacting Jacob in a way that he will carry with him forever. Here, an obvious limp from the sheer physicality of the struggle, but at other times, it may simply be a learning, a subtle impact on his personality or a nuance in the way he lives. This moment doesn’t create a dramatic change in Jacob, but he is changed, nonetheless.
Just like in the earlier story of Jacob’s dream of the stairway between heaven and earth, he names the place of this experience. Because he realizes it was God that he had faced, he calls it Peniel, which means “face of God.”
If only God were always that obvious.
I think we wrestle with God everyday. Not every moment is a Peniel moment and we might not recognize God right away, if at all. But I think we’re constantly encountering God in ways that challenge us as well as affirm and comfort us. There are blessings in those moments and those experiences change us in ways that are both obvious and subtle.
One of the most important parts of the story is that Jacob won’t let go. I don’t think it’s really a question of the wrestling God can’t defeat Jacob, I think Jacob simply won’t give up and let go. I wonder if that isn’t the secret to the success of Jacob’s life story: Jacob simply won’t let go of God.
In our own stories, I wonder how tightly we might hold on to God, however we know God. As the traditional God of our faith traditions, as the spirit of life that’s in all things, as the love, grace, kindness or hope that’s in that living. Hold tight, it’s gonna leave a mark. And a blessing.
