I have been imagining this over and over recently, this moment where the Almighty wrestled a human (merely) being.
Was it hot that night? Did sweat slide down the brow of Jacob only? Did the Mysterious Man rub away the dust that surely covered His face? Was there a breeze that rustled the leaves and added to the soundtrack of shuffling feet and labored breathing?
Did they lock eyes in the moonlight? Did Jacob know he was holding the same arms that hung the stars in the sky? Did they speak as they struggled?
How did it feel to wrestle this God, this Creator, this Everlasting I Am?
How did it feel?
You know, my soul answers. You know. Because right now? You are wrestling God.
In all of the ups and downs (and down some more) that have been happening since for the past daysweeksmonths, in the midst of cancer appointments and tragedy around the world and tragedy around the corner and resting on top of it all, an unexpected and heavy heartbreak, I have found myself in a new place. My past dictates this pattern: Things are hard. Run away. Find something gentler, something easier, a sunnier space to stretch out in and feel the sunbeams kiss your shoulders.
My past dictates the easy way out, for faith.
But no longer. This time I remain in the dark (for but a moment), I engage in the doubt, I engage in the struggle.
I engage.
And in that engagement alone, in the not-hiding, I grow (up). In the exhaustion of standing right before the Almighty I Am and asking Him the kind of sentence with a question mark at the end:
Are you good?
It’s the not the doubt that He is. He is, that much is certain. We are locked together He & I.
It’s the very real doubt that the Creator who poured so much good into this planet & this life I live, who poured out His beauty into the flowers and voices of the children and kindness of a stranger, that He is still good- still working His good. Somehow. Somehow. Somehow.
And then, buried somewhere in the Words of my Faith is a promise. We are wrestling now, here in the dark, but time moves on of its own accord, and morning is coming. The sun is coming.
(The sun came up as he left Peniel).
And I too, limp away from this place, changed. Joy intact. Doubt intact. Faith intact.
The man said, “Let me go; it’s daybreak.” Jacob said, “I’m not letting you go ’til you bless me.” The man said, “What’s your name?” He answered, “Jacob.” The man said, “But no longer. Your name is no longer Jacob. From now on it’s Israel (God-Wrestler); you’ve wrestled with God and you’ve come through.” Jacob asked, “And what’s your name?” The man said, “Why do you want to know my name?” And then, right then and there, he blessed him. Jacob named the place Peniel (God’s Face) because, he said, “I saw God face-to-face and lived to tell the story!” The sun came up as he left Peniel… (Genesis 31:26-31a)
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