Good morning…
“Why bother?” asks Sean Thomas Dougherty. Then, he answers his own question.
“Because right now,
there is someone
out there with
a wound
in the exact shape
of your words.”
Painful wounds and healing words meet at the right moment. Here, at the crossroads of wounds and words, God’s presence is palpable. Might the power of God’s presence be enough for us to bother?
But Jacob stayed behind by himself, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he couldn’t get the best of Jacob as they wrestled, he deliberately threw Jacob’s hip out of joint.
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” (Genesis 32:24-28, MSG).
The footnote for Genesis 32:28 highlights the word Israel. This name might mean “he fights for God,” “he fights with God,” or “God fights.”
Like Jacob, will we bother to stay behind by our self?
As we fight for God, as we fight with God, and as God fights with and for us, eventually we receive a blessing. By God, we are given the exact words to soothe the wounds of ones who wrestle at daybreak, ones who wrestle at daybreak and come through.
…Sue…
P.S. Today we wake on the morning after the 80th anniversary of D-Day. The Allied invasion of Normandy in northern France on June 6, 1944, was the largest amphibious military assault the world has ever seen. The unified effort ushered in the beginning of the end of World War II in Europe on May 8, 1945.
Through our early morning wrestling with God, might we be blessed with healing words that usher in the beginning of the end of today’s wounding wars?
