Wrestling till dawn

It is the night before Jacob must face Esau, the brother he cheated of birthright and blessing twenty years before, and Esau is coming with four hundred men. Jacob sends his family and everything he owns across the ford of the Jabbok and stays behind, alone in the dark, which is exactly where a man goes to be afraid. And in the dark a man comes and wrestles him until daybreak. It is one of the strangest scenes in all of Scripture, a human being grappling hand to hand through the night with someone the text will finally let us understand is God Himself. When the stranger sees he cannot prevail, he touches the socket of Jacob's hip and wrenches it loose, and still Jacob holds on. As dawn breaks the man says, let me go. And Jacob, gasping, ruined in the hip, refuses: I will not let you go unless you bless me. So he is blessed, and given a new name, Israel, one who strives with God. But the sun rises on him as he limps away over Peniel, his thigh wrenched for life. He leaves blessed and renamed and lamed, all three, and you cannot grapple with God through the night and come away the same.

Not all disorientation is a passive thing that happens to you. Some of it is a wrestling match, and the One you are wrestling is God. You came into the dark to be alone with your fear and found yourself gripping Someone in the night, and the struggle is not a sign you have lost your faith. It may be the most strenuous act of faith you have ever made. So do not be too quick to let go. Jacob's refusal, ruined hip and all, is the holy stubbornness of a man who will not release God without a blessing. But understand what such a struggle costs. You may walk away limping. Some wrestling with God leaves a permanent mark, a wound you carry the rest of your life, a way you will never move again exactly as before. We want the blessing without the limp. Scripture keeps insisting they come together, that the same night gives both. The limp is not the proof you lost. It is the proof you grappled with God in the dark and would not let go, and were touched by Him, and lived.