Life is hard. It’s hard in different ways for different people.
For some, it’s hard finding safety from war, or natural disaster. For others, it’s hard finding food and water. There are people who find difficulty in their medical conditions. It can be hard to pay bills, or to keep a job. It can be a challenge to meet market expectations for Q3 earnings. It can be difficult to maintain popularity as another election approaches.
With all the natural, human, and social struggles, why would we want to wrestle with God?
Let’s go to God in prayer.
God of wisdom, may the words that I speak, and the ways they are received by each of our hearts and minds, to help us to continue to grow into the people, and the church, that you have dreamed us to be.
Amen.
There are some places where there’s a gray area between God, angels, and men.
For example, in Genesis 18 we read that
“The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre,
as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day.
2 He looked up and saw three men standing near him.”
Genesis 18:1-2, NRSVue
And in verses 22 through 33, Abraham bargains with God about how the minimum number of righteous people that would protect Sodom from destruction. The minimum was ten people. And – spoiler – there were not ten righteous in Sodom.
But there seems to be some gray area between God, angels, and men here.
And in today’s reading Jacob is wrestling with a man. And the passage continues to call Jacob’s opponent a man right up until verse 28, where the man says
“You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel,
for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.”
Genesis 32:28, NRSVue
This is the first hint that Jacob is wrestling with God.
And then in verse 30:
So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying,
“For I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved.”
Genesis 32:30, NRSVue
Jacob begins his struggle with a stranger he assumes is a man, but at the end it appears that he was wrestling with God.
There are reasons we may choose to not pray. A problem may seem to small to bother God about. Maybe there is an insect bite that is itching and distracting us: should we bother the creator of the universe with something so trivial?
A problem may seem too great. An uncontrolled wildfire is burning up forest and homes: should we pray for the kind of miracle that would stop it?
We may me suffering from choices we made. A large purchase may exhaust our ability to pay for necessities: should we pray for a solution to a problem we created?
When we look at stories like Abraham bargaining with God for the protection of even ten righteous in Sodom, or of Jacob wrestling with a man, perhaps with God, we can see that there is often a blurred line between the earthly and the heavenly.
And in case we give up hope when help does not come soon enough, our Gospel reading encourages us to be persistent in prayer.
Jesus’ parable about the judge who cares about nothing but himself shows that even a self-centered individual will grant justice, if only to no longer be bothered by requests.
Jesus is not saying that God doesn’t care about people. He is saying that if even an uncaring person will listen to persistent cries for help, then a loving God will do much more.
Can we fight God? I suppose we could. I don’t think we will win. If we won, I think we would be disappointed.
We can, however, wrestle with God. We can bargain with God. And we can pray to God. And in most cases, we will find ourselves changed in the process.
When I think of the Trinity, I think of Jesus as Emmanuel: God with us. God who walked on Earth with humans, God who knows birth and death, hunger and fullness, gain and loss, comfort and pain.
And when we think that God the creator is too great to regard small humans, and the Holy Spirit too mysterious to envision, Jesus who walked with us is someone we can come to and say “I hurt.”
So my challenge to all of us this week is to be aware of times when we feel something needs to change: for ourselves, or for others. And in those moments, offer up a prayer.
It doesn’t need to be a sixty verse psalm. Sometimes it can be as simple as “help!” Even the three letter “OMG” is a prayer.
Let’s be willing to carry every big thing, and every little thing, to God in prayer.
Amen.
Let’s sing NCH 506 What a Friend We Have in Jesus
* Scripture quotations marked NRSVue are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. https://www.friendshippress.org/pages/about-the-nrsvue
* Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James version of the Bible.
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