Soul-scape - sea

The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had.  Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.  Genesis 32:22-24

By the banks of the sea, as the water lapped at the shore, Jacob encountered the holy as he wrestled/struggled with the sacred.  At this point in Jacob's story he and his family are wandering in the wilderness, the wildness of life.  He has fled from every home he had ever known.  

Pause with me here...where is that a truth of your soul-scape?

When in your life have you felt spiritually or physically homeless?

When have you felt like you wander as you wonder which way to go?  This can happen when in-between a job or when a relationship ends or when you are about to begin a new school year.

Throughout these posts we are paying attention to how creation is an important character in scripture.  That the trees or seas or dust or mountains are not just background scenery, but are playing a vital and vibrant role in the story.  However we do not always pay attention.  It is significant to me that this wrestling match takes place by the sea, water.  From Genesis 1, water is a symbol of both chaos and calm, but creativity and life crashing down in waves.  Water is able to hold in tension the paradoxical strangeness and wonder of life.  Water sometimes is soothing, think here of the words from the 23^rd psalm where God leads you to still, quiet, calm, centering water.  But at other times water awakens fear think here of Noah’s Ark or when Jesus was snoozing in the back of the boat while 10 foot waves came crashing down drenching the disciples.  

Water as a character in scripture plays an important role.  What we hear in this passage of Jacob wrestling by the sea opens us to the sense of the sacred struggle.  The sacred struggle with ourselves, our own blessings and brokenness.  The sacred struggle with others, whose words have left wounds or those who know how to push all our buttons to get a reaction out of us.  The sacred struggle with the earth that continually cries as the Amazon rain forest burns and plastic pollutes our waters and trash piles up higher and higher.  To struggle by the sea, where is that a truth in your life right now?  Where do you feel like Jacob?  In a world that wants to deny the realities of getting older, doesn’t ever want to talk about death, keeps propping up a sense that science can solve everything.  In a world where we have not yet really come to terms with the fact that we are living longer lives and where fears around finances and health and relationships can cause our souls to shift, stir, and wrestle.  Where is your story and Jacob’s story mirroring each other? 

Wrestling in the wilderness, encountering the wildness of life, Jacob’s soul is shaped by this encounter.  After tossing and turning all night, as dawn is about to break over the horizon, the holy asks to be released, but Jacob, always looking for an angle says, “Not until you bless me.”  Jacob the hustler, the trickster, the one who always wants to look like a winner.  By the sea, the angel asks for his name.  In my ear, to my heart, deep in my soul, I see that scene, like this:  after struggling all night, after wrestling with the ghosts inside and outside of himself, exhausted from a life that where he has always run away from.  I see the sacred and Jacob locked in a grip, and when asked for his name, I see Jacob release his grasp, the way he has white knuckled his life.  I see his shoulders drop, even droop, I see him look right at the sacred and in a voice barely above a whisper he says, “Jacob.”  My name is Jacob.  Can you hear him softly say his name as if his whole life is flashing before his eyes and he sees his own life in a new way?

In the early morning shadows of a few beams of light peaking over, Jacob names and claims his brokenness.  Jacob acknowledges that his need for control and to be in charge, that he has constantly struggled.  I am Jacob.  By the sea, it is almost a baptismal moment.  Jacob not only embodies his name, but embraces it.  Then, the holy blesses him and gives him a new name (Israel) which means, striving and struggling with God.  Faith, from the beginning has always had room for our dancing with doubt.  Faith, the soul scapes of our lives, have been shaped by waters that are calm and choppy.  Faith is about us acknowledging our created in God’s image selves have both light and shadows, have both moments we shine and times we struggle.  The blessing comes not in spite of that work, but through it.  It is my prayer, that this story will sing to your life this day.  In those seaside moments where you encounter the holy both in moments of calm watching the waves and when those wave chaotically churn and crash down.  In the seaside moments of this week, you will hear and feel God’s blessing infusing and inspiring you in such a time as this. 

Blessing ~~