Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." – Genesis 32:26

 Today's Scripture Reading (August 30, 2021): Genesis 32

Charlotte Brontë, in her classic work, "Jane Eyre," writes, "I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself." It is the anthem of the self-sufficient. Maybe it is a song that we have all sung at some point in our lives. Sometimes, when we are alone, it is a song that reminds us that we are still valuable. At other times, it is a song that we want to sing. But it is a song based on a lie that says that we don't need each other.

And it has been a song that I want to sing. For most of my life, my goal has been to be able to depend on me for the goals of my life. Part of that dream has been to be financially independent, not depending on anyone else, including the government, to have the things that my family requires for life. This meant putting money away for retirement, securing a place to live, fulfilling the dream of homeownership, all of these things that I have sacrificed to attempt to achieve. I desire to care for myself.

But the older I get, the more that I realize that self-sufficiency is probably an unachievable dream. We need each other, even when we profess that we don't. We were created in such a way that we require a community to be the best that we can be. I am repeatedly brought back to the words of God, recorded in Genesis when he speaks of the future creation of the human race. God's comment reflects the concept of essential community. "Let us make mankind in our image [and] in our likeness." God, who exists in community as Father, Son, and Spirit, created us in his image, with a need for a similar community that reflects the community in which God has always existed. We need each other. The concept of self-sufficiency is just an illusion that we like to believe can be true in our lives.

Jacob might be a great example of this illusion of self-sufficiency. Jacob had always believed that he could manipulate the world around him so that he didn't need anyone else. Jacob was clever enough to depend on himself, and when his cleverness didn't get him where he wanted to go, Jacob was sneaky enough to get what he wanted so that he didn't need God or anyone else.

But things had changed. Jacob was scared and, for the first time since maybe his childhood, he needed help. And so he prayed to God who he had never felt the need to depend on;

I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness you have shown your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two camps. Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid he will come and attack me, and also the mothers with their children. But you have said, 'I will surely make you prosper and will make your descendants like the sand of the sea, which cannot be counted'" (Genesis 32:10-12).  

 And when God comes to Jacob, he wrestled with God, an image of Jacob's persistence in his request with God. To go forward, I need your blessing. There is no more time to fight with you or with myself. God, all I can do is hang on to you with everything that I have, and that is what I intend to do until you give me your blessing. This moment becomes a time of transition in the life of Jacob. Until this point in his life, he had always believed that the enemy was outside of him. His enemy was Esau, or maybe Laban, or even the desires of his father, Isaac. But the reality was that the real problem was that Jacob had lived his life outside of a community. The real problem was on the inside of him, and it did not reside in the world that surrounded him.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Genesis 33