Wrestling with the LORD (10/29/2024)

Last evening, we had our final Snacks and Bible Study session on Ephesians. We tackled the difficult passage on right-relationships for wives and husbands. We had a lively exchange of ideas as we wrestled in 2024 with words written nearly two millenniums ago. The message hasn’t changed over all those years, but our sensitivity to certain words has. In the end, I believe clarification was achieved. Sometimes, we have to wrestle with the LORD – it’s part of our vocation.

As you will recall, in the Old Testament book of Genesis, Jacob wrestled with the LORD all night. In the end, the LORD gave him a new name, Israel (Genesis 32:28), which literally means “Let God win.” Jacob was not the last to wrestle with the LORD, we do it all the time as we seek to make our way along “the Way.” We wrestle with the LORD over what we want versus what the LORD is calling us to do and be. Eventually, we like Jacob get it, the only way to truly grow into ourselves, the ones we were created to be by our all-loving LORD, is to “let God win.”

Yesterday, as we wrestled, we kept coming back to the beginning of the passage, “Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Each of us is called to cooperate with one another in the Spirit, to willingly and lovingly accept and yield, to do what is necessary to bring the other closer to Christ for love of them and love of Christ. But in this day, yielding or submitting carries a negative connotation weighted heavily by struggles within our world and society. If we focus on a word too long, we lose sight of the whole. The whole is given to us to make us one, to unite us, to unite us around Christ, to unite us in the Spirit.

Throughout our lives, we will have moments when we wrestle with the LORD, when the words of a text challenge us, when the prescriptions of the text test us wholly before they transform us. This is not new. Some of our most revered saints know well about wrestling with the LORD and letting the LORD win: St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Teresa of Calcutta. May we always wrestle with faith, hope and love and may the LORD always win.

Until tomorrow, let us all love well.