FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Scripture: Genesis 32:3-8, 22-30; Luke 18:1-8

The hurts in our lives are that real, and they can be very severe; they can leave marks of battle on us for the rest of our days on this earth. We very well may go on living and trying to make the most of what we have to work with, but we may walk with a slight limp as long as we try to walk at all. Faith healers, much more than Jesus and His word, have made us think we can get on after a serious wound without pain from time to time.

Could you have imagined how any good could have come to anyone who lived in the aftermath of San Francisco’s 1906 or 1989 earthquakes? The tragedy realized in both cases was unspeakable! We won’t minimize that or try to rationalize the irreplaceable losses of life and well-being in any sense. Didn’t it strike you as remarkable that survivors didn’t just pick up and get out of there? In contrast to what we might expect, radio reporters focused in on the immediate sense of community and helpfulness put to work by those who lived through both these catastrophes. Rescue efforts, formal and informal, by professionals and persons on the street, began instantly and remained relentless for days and weeks. Talk of rebuilding and learning from structural mistakes began at once. The people were demanding a blessing from the godless destruction.

The question we have to ask ourselves is, can we receive a blessing out of our struggles, out of our crises? Are we willing to ask our Lord for one? Is life worth enough to us that we will not let it be destroyed even by the aggressive assault of tragedy and grief, personal failings and loss of prestige, and lingering threats to well-being and religious doubting? Will we be brave enough in the struggle with these to face them head on, and will we refuse to let them go until even these expressions of evil add something positive to our lives? Here is the utter paradox of Jacob’s story and ours. Its truth only works in God’s economy: God is not the author of evil, but God, and only God, can help us wring something beneficial out of what has sought to destroy us.

One of my favorite verses, one that I choose to live by, is found in Romans 8:28, “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” Notice that Paul wrote, all things. That means everything; good, bad, or indifferent. Do you love God? Are you called, chosen according to His purpose and desire for you? I can’t tell you precisely how God works it, but I can tell you from a life of personal experiences, the Lord accomplishes His perfect will through all we go through; each of us can only know it for ourselves in the heat of the struggle. But coming through it, if you love the Lord and abide in Him, you will find blessing!

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture: Genesis 32:3-8, 22-30; Luke 18:1-8

From Last Lesson: Jacob, no doubt, believed that God had brought all of this to him and that God was possibly trying to tell him something through this encounter.

We are not surprised, then, to learn that Jacob takes the one with whom he wrestles in the night to be none other than God. Now, don’t write off Jacob as a crackpot, because isn’t that precisely our conclusion much of the time? Alone and in the darkness, facing crisis of some sort, don’t we come to think that God is behind it all? That in the struggle, God Himself is combating us? Haven’t many of us been convinced, at one time or another, that God has it in for us, that He’s punishing us for past mistakes? Or at least that God could prevent our pain if God only cared enough about us? Our perceptions are distorted. God is the Advocate for the suffering and downtrodden in our world.

Do you remember Jesus’ parable about the widow who kept demanding justice from a callous judge? Time after time he put her off, but she kept appealing; and finally the judge “said within himself, ‘Though I do not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me’ ” (Luke 18:4-5). Remember Jesus’ comment on this story was: “And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them?” (Luke 18:7-8). There is a kind of divine justice in having good come out of evil. The parable says that those who seek justice of whatever sort will, ultimately, experience it.

Jacob was seeking justice; he wanted the just opportunity of seeing things in his life made as right as he could make them. The mysterious antagonist who represented for him both his enemies and his God might very well end Jacob’s life in a cul-de-sac in which he did not want to end it. Jacob was determined to fight for all he was worth to prevent that; he would fight his crisis and demand a blessing of it. He would demand a blessing even from what caused his pain. Add to all the pain Jacob had already known in his life, all the rejection, all the fear, all the guilt, then add to these the pain of the struggle itself. When the one with whom Jacob wrestled “saw that He did not prevail against him, He touched the socket of his hip; and the socket of Jacob’s hip was out of joint as He wrestled with him” (Genesis 32:25). This was no dream. Jacob would limp the rest of his life.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture: Genesis 32:3-8, 22-30; Luke 18:1-8

The Old Testament story of Jacob and Esau picks up many years later when both are married and heads of their own households. The brothers haven’t seen each other in years, yet they seem to have done well for themselves.

Evidently, Jacob gets to the point in his life at which he is reflective enough to have appropriate regret for some of the many ways he had taken advantage of people, and right at the top of the list is his brother, Esau. He finds out that Esau is living in the land of Seir, and he sends some of his servants ahead, asking if it might be possible to heal old wounds. Esau doesn’t answer. He simply tells the servants to inform Jacob that he and 400 of his men will be coming to meet him to talk about old times. Jacob, of course, was terrified, and rightly so. However, Jacob is tired of running. Still, he doesn’t want to lose at Esau’s hand everything he’s worked so hard to accumulate all these years, so he divides his people and his possessions into two groups so the most he can lose is half of it all.

From the part of his estate which he had kept close by, Jacob designated a generous gift for his brother and went to great effort to arrange how the gift would be presented, well before Esau could actually see Jacob.

The half of Jacob’s estate which he had kept for easy access and his family was sent across the Jabbok ford. As a precaution against meeting Esau face to face, Jacob brought up the rear and for some reason trailed behind a good bit. Alone on this side of the Jabbok, Jacob had the experience of his life. There wasn’t anything fun about the circumstance. “Then Jacob was left alone; and a Man wrestled with him until the breaking of day” (Genesis 32:24). He may have thought for a moment that Esau had come up on his blind side, but with a moment’s reflection, he became convinced otherwise. Actually, when Esau and his 400 men finally did reach Jacob, they came in peace; Esau came for reconciliation. However, that was later.

For the moment, Jacob is left alone in the wilderness; that is where he wrestled with his mysterious opponent. He was literally alone in that he was in the darkness without a single family member or servant around. To make it worse, the inescapable focus of his thoughts was his crooked pattern of relating to people; he could not stop thinking about the wrongs of his life, and that was a great crisis for Jacob. There was loneliness and despair in the face of his failings. Then, to heighten all the tension, he wasn’t sure he’d live through the night. The last he’d heard from Esau, his brother had planned to kill him. Jacob, no doubt, believed that God had brought all of this to him and that God was possibly trying to tell him something through this encounter.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture: Genesis 32:3-8, 22-30; Luke 18:1-8

We are not immune from pain and struggle. We can’t ignore crisis and tragedy, and we can’t escape them. They’re with us from time to time and will continue to be, so what do we do with them?

Some of us have a quick answer. We give in right away. No contest. Tragedy wins, and we lose. The best we hope for ourselves in such situations is to be able to run away as quickly as we can from what has harmed us to where we can nurse our wounds. Perhaps reacting in any other way has never even occurred to some of us. Giving up is the most natural response because we are absolutely certain that there isn’t anywhere or anyone to whom we can turn, and we’re quite sure that we can’t take the pain alone.

That may be part of the problem. While we can turn to others for comfort and solace in our pain, others simply can’t endure our pain for us. There is much that is unpleasant in life which, in terms of direct contact, we have to bear alone. How often have we wished we could suffer in place of someone we love? But we can’t, and this assuredly is one of the reasons we all feel utterly alone at times. Facing our own illness, tragedy, economic devastation, or family crisis leaves us frightened and feeling isolated, feeling like the only one afflicted by a capricious turn of cruel nature.

In Stephen Crane’s story, “The Open Boat,” four men in a lifeboat are rowing along in the middle of nowhere after the steamer on which they were traveling sank. They aren’t certain they’ll make it out of their situation alive. Should they keep trying, though, in spite of their frustration, fear, and fatigue? Or should they be realistic and simply give up? The narrator of the story points this out when it occurs to one of them that nature doesn’t regard him as important, and that the universe wouldn’t be hurt of upset by disposing of him. ¹

Sometimes, for us, when we aren’t able to think clearly as God and nature seem to be the same entity. We feel assaulted and, at the same time, abandoned by God. Talk about pathos! That high, cold star, that remote, silent object is, in our reckoning, none other than God. But is it ever true that God assaults us and then leaves us hurting? Is it ever true that God assaults us at all?

Jacob believed he wrestled with God. The encounter in question came about after a long series of strangely interconnected events. You, might possibly, remember many of them. We all recall Jacob’s tricking his twin brother, Esau, out of the family birthright which meant more material possessions and prestige, normally for the oldest son in the family. We all probably remember the story of Jacob stealing Esau’s blessing from his nearly-blind father Isaac by some skillful planning and playacting with the help of his mother. We remember these stories, but we may not recall what Esau did when what had happened finally dawned upon him. He decided to kill his conniving brother, Jacob (Genesis 27:41). The news of Esau’s intention sent Jacob running.

To Be Continued

¹ Stephen Crane, “The Open Boat,” The Norton Anthology of American Literature, vol. 2 (Norton and Co., 1979).
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.