Whiteboard: Wrestling

This week's Whiteboard picture was surprisingly difficult.

Not because the drawing was hard. No, I found a picture online that I liked and copied it to the best of my (limited) ability.

No, the hard part was deciding what title to write down below the image.

Read over Genesis 32:22-31 and answer me this one question: Who is Jacob wrestling with? (For your convenience you can find the scripture passage at the bottom of this article.)

It's not an easy question to answer, is it?

Christian tradition holds that Jacob was wrestling with an angel. You'll find the image repeated time and again in religious art and architecture -- Jacob in the heat of battle, wrestling with a white-winged creature that has come down unexpectedly from on high.

But Christian traditions also holds that it was God that Jacob was wrestling with. In fact, you can find that title ascribed to the text in the New International Version (NIV), the English Standard Version (ESV), the New Century Version (NCV), and at least a dozen other English language translations. And even though those particular words don't show up in the scripture account itself (remember, those titles are added by editors and publishers, they are not original to the text) you have to admit that the blessing Jacob gets from his foe is at least open to the interpretation that this could be God.

And yet, the text itself simply says that Jacob wrestles with a man. An unnamed, unknown assailant who comes out of nowhere, appears to fight dirty, and yet offers a name-changing and legacy-defining blessing for Jacob, now rechristened Israel.

That is why I struggled with what to write under the image. Do you write "Jacob Wrestles with God" or "Jacob Wrestles with the Angel" or "Jacob Wrestles with Some Random Stranger" or something else? Ultimately, I took the easy way out just used the ellipsis: Jacob Wrestles...

It is a story worth wrestling with, frankly because it reminds us that it is, in fact, a blessing to wrestle. It is a blessing to wrestle with our faith, to wrestle with our beliefs, to wrestle with how we live and who we are, and even a blessing to wrestle with God.

That's what we'll be talking about this Sunday in worship: Wrestling with God -- the God who will not let us go, the God who knows us deeper than we know ourselves, the God who blesses us and opens to us the fullness of life's possibilities. I hope to see you this Sunday in worship!