The Man Who Wrestled with God

Wrestling with the Big Man

“So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak.  When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.”

                                  Genesis 32: 24-25

         One of the things that always interested me about this story of Jacob wrestling with God is the fact that Jacob sent his wives and children across the Jabbok ahead of him.  He was going home at long last with all he owned—Leah and Rachel, maidservants, eleven sons, Dinah, his daughter and his flocks.  He didn’t know how he’d be received by Esau, who was now in control of all Isaac’s holdings.  He expected Esau to still be angry and murderous—so he sent his precious children as a potential offering, a sacrifice, to assuage his brother’s anger.  Still the same old Jacob after all these years.

         We are told that Jacob wrestled with God all night there on the banks of the Jabbok.  And, while he didn’t best his assailant, he managed to wring a blessing out of him.  The blessing was a new name—Israel, meaning ‘he struggles with God’.  He limped away from the struggle with God, crossed the stream and was reunited with his brother without bloodshed.  In fact Esau welcomed him with open arms.  Maybe because, now crippled and without pretension, Jacob kneeled down and begged his brother’s forgiveness.  Wrestling with God will take the sap out of you in a hurry.  You come away from it a changed person.

         What does it mean to wrestle with God and be blessed by it?  You’d have to ask my friend, Fern, who has just completed chemotherapy and radiation for breast and ovarian cancer.  When one receives a diagnosis such as cancer, huge and difficult decisions have to be made.  One has to decide whether to intervene and to what degree, and at what point to say, enough.  Or ask my friend, Ellen, who had a heart attack and for a paralyzing twenty-four hours didn’t know whether she would live or die.  Or, ask any parent who has had to take a critically injured child off life support.  Wrestling with God happens any time we have to make hard choices between painful options.

         I have met many people who have gone through a dark night of the soul, such as a cancer diagnosis, and lived to call it a blessing.  When confronting our own mortality, it’s easier to see clearly what is precious, what has meaning, and what is unimportant.  Such occasions have a way of scraping the scales from our eyes and allowing us to set priorities.  We make big decisions that we’ve been putting off—like honing life down to what is truly meaningful and dear, and eliminating those things and people who drag us down.  We clean up our act, so to speak.  Jacob got down off his high-horse and joined the human race.  Wrestling with God has a way of wringing the ego right out of you.  And, when we recognize our humble humanity, when we realize that every single day is a gift, we are truly blessed. 

                                  Shalom,

                                  Jane