So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. – Genesis 32:24

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 1, 2012): Genesis 32

Do you have a place where you just go to think things through? For me, now it is probably my office; but growing up there was a huge tree with high branches and a nice clear area under it that I went to. It was in a small wooded area just a couple of blocks from my house. And whenever I was struggling with an issue, I went and sat underneath that tree. With my back leaning against the tree, and often no one else around to disturb my thinking, it just seemed to be a good place just to go to wrestle with stuff. And so I did.

Jacob felt like he needed to find his version of my tree. He had a strategy, he knew what he had to do and he put his plan into action, but finally he came to that uncomfortable moment when all he could do was sit, wait and pray. And, finally, he started to doze.

It was at that moment that the wrestling started. The author of Genesis simply says at the beginning of the match that it was a man. Later, the man would reveal himself to be God, but in the beginning you have to wonder if Jacob thought it was a particular man that had come to meet him in the night. – Esau. You have to wonder if Jacob was picturing the Esau that he had left years earlier – the Esau that he had cheated and had vowed to kill him as soon as their father had died. It was Esau that had occupied all of Jacob’s imagination. It was Esau that was the object of his strategizing. It was Esau that he was making his apologies to. It was all about Esau. So why wouldn’t the man that came to him in the night be – Esau. And, for me, that raises a second question – if he had known it was God at the beginning of the fight, would that have changed the outcome.

My truth is that the things that we wrestle with in the dark are often worse than the real difficulties that we will meet with in the daylight. God was working through both Jacob and Esau, although Jacob didn’t know that. And sometimes maybe my problem is that I don’t trust God enough to work through my difficult situations.  Communications pioneer Theodore N. Vail once said as he struggled in the early days of the telephone that “real difficulties can be overcome; it’s only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.” And when we add God into the mix, we have reason to be a people of confidence.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Genesis 33