For Lent at COTA this year a man in our parish is teaching a class on prayer entitled Great Arguments with God. Last night we examined Jacob’s all night wrestling match with God. To aid us in this exploratation we read from Frederick Beuchner’s The Son of Laughter. In it Beuchner retells Jacob’s encounter with God in dramatic fashion. What Beuchner reveals in his retelling is how Jacob really didn’t know who he was wrestling with or even why he was wrestling until the night was over. Jacob’s confusion struck a cord with me, especially as we reflected upon prayer and fighting with God.
It is easy to be energized by an argument or fight if one knows what it is they are fighting for. We see this in other scriptural accounts where people argued with God because God was clearly in the wrong, or it was quite obvious that God needed to do something (i.e. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?). But what about when you are striving with God or life, or whatever, but you really don’t know why.
I find this scenario more common for my own spiritual journey. Wrestling in the dark with the unknown, wandering through the desert with no destination. I’m told there is a promise, or blessing out there somewhere, but the fact that it is out there, fails to make the present any clearer.
