Daily Lesson for February 21, 2014

Today's Daily Lesson is from Genesis 32:

"23 [Jacob] took them and sent them across the stream, and everything else that he had. 24 And Jacob was left alone. And man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day."

Cormac McCarthy's book "All the Pretty Horses" is a novel about the journey two young cowboys make from their native West Texas into Mexico. The journey corresponds with the boys' interior journey from adolescence into manhood. In a poignant scene, the boys come to the Rio Grande and pause. "Maybe we ought to spend one more night on this side," one of them says.

Jacob is on the similar journey to adulthood. It's been over a decade since he left home, scared of his brother Esau's retribution after what Jacob cheated him out of their father's blessing. Jacob is good at cheating - a swindler from birth. That's even what his name means - "swindler" or "huckster" or "cheater". But Jacob is tired of being these things. And he knows the only way to stop being them is to go back face the music - to cross the Jabbock River and go back home.

But like the cowboys in "All the Pretty Horses", when he comes to the river and pauses. He too stays one more night on the safe side of the river. In other words, he too is not quite ready to grow up.

But then on the banks of the river the angel shows up - or is it the LORD himself? A mysterious stranger in shadow sent to wrestle Jacob in the middle of the night. It is a tooth and nail struggle, a fight to hold on and not give in. Each attempts to squeeze the lifeblood out of the other. But neither can prevail. Finally the sun begins to come up. The angel resorts to a final, desperate move. "Let me go," the man in shadows says, but Jacob will not let him go - not until he blesses him.

Jacob is wrestling with the shadow side of himself. He is coming to terms with his own trickery and deception. He knows that in his youth he stole his father's blessing in an act of deception. Now he holds out for a true blessing - a blessing gained not through manipulation but through the struggle of wrestling with self and with God. And that is what he gets, the blessing of a new name - no longer Jacob the swindler, he is now Israel, the one who wrestles with God.

The sun then rises and Israel crosses over the Jabok, ready now to face whatever is ahead.

Crossing over into adulthood is a frightening thing. Growing up is painful as it means facing dark truths about ourselves. We would prefer not to cross the river - to stay another night where we are. 

But the story of Jacob tells us God just isn't going to let us stay where we are. If he has to, God will come and wrestle us over to the other side. That's how committed He is to seeing us grow up.