Sunday of the second week of Advent: Wrestling with God

Presence

Lord, God, my Creator, Be close to me now. My soul yearns for Your presence.

Scripture

Genesis 32:22-30

The same night [Jacob] got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let us go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.”
Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved.”

Reflection

One of the most haunting episodes in Genesis is the wordless, night-long struggle between Jacob and the mysterious stranger on the banks of the Jabbok. Jacob is a deeply flawed and deceitful man. He is travelling to make his peace with Esau, the brother whom he so grievously wronged many years before by cheating him of his birthright. Having sent his family across the river, Jacob remained alone as night fell. Into this dark and brooding atmosphere, a supernatural stranger came and launched a violent attack on Jacob.
Jacob reacted quickly to the assault. The ensuing struggle was gruelling. There were no weapons, just body grappling with body hour after hour after hour in a brutal, wordless encounter. As dawn crept over the horizon, Jacob was suddenly disabled. His unseen opponent had effortlessly dislocated his thigh. Having prevailed in equal contest, duplicitous Jacob was himself cheated of victory. It was at this point that the first words were spoken. Jacob’s opponent said, “Let us go, for the day is breaking”.
“I will not let you go”, Jacob said between clenched teeth, “unless you bless me”. His life had been marked by elaborate deceptions perpetrated both by him and upon him. On the banks of the Jabbok, God forced him into a head-on challenge and Jacob found he had resources he didn’t know he had. This was a situation demanding face to face confrontation and Jacob responded. He displayed courage, endurance and tenacity and when he was unfairly immobilised, he conceded only on his own terms and was renamed “Israel” meaning “one who struggled with God”. This devious but tenacious man would go on to become the patriarch of the twelve tribes of Israel, the land named after him.

Prayer

There comes a time for many of us when, in order to go forward, we must first stop. We have to stand back from everybody and everything in our lives and – utterly alone with ourselves – confront all the compromises we have made. In order to find our way, we have to go deep into the shadows.
Lord, when I find myself on that dark and lonely battlefield, wrestling with all that keeps me from you, help me persevere in my struggle and give me the strength to be reconciled with my past and my present, and with those I may have wronged.

Amen

Glory to you, Father, source of all being,

to you, Jesus, Word made flesh,

to you Holy Spirit, Comforter,

as it was before time began,

is now and shall be into the future.

Amen.