My attention

This morning I was reading my Bible. Before I started I prayed 2 things...God please show me your motives in what I am about to read and God please show me my motives while I am reading. It was fascinating to me to then read my Bible. It was like I was there. I could feel the emotions of the story. I could almost taste the dust of the caravan. I was reading about Jacob in the book of Genesis. I have been reading through Genesis since the beginning of the year. Just reading slowly and soaking it in. Really listening this time instead of just reading the words. Letting God tell me His story. I have learned so much. Here's one story:



Genesis 32:22-32 talks about when Jacob literally wrestled with God. This is a somewhat humorous story to me. I mean really...ok so this is what is say...well the context is this...Jacob is returning home after 20 odd years of being away. He ran away (from present day Israel to present day SE Turkey near the border of Syria) in the first place because he had, through deception, stolen his twin brother's blessing (Genesis 27 recounts that story). His brother got mad...well furious...he said something along the lines of "my dad is going to die soon and once that happens I will then kill my brother" (by the way his dad lived another 40 years so Jacob would have been fine but he had no way of knowing that). So really Jacob, who was more of a lover not a fighter, was not really safe. So his mom told him to go to her brother's "until your brother's fury subsides". So needless to say Jacob and Esau didn't last see each other on the best of terms. And now Jacob is coming home and he is afraid of meeting his brother. Esau was a mighty and fierce warrior. He finds out that Esau is coming to meet him (and his family...Jacob a very VERY wealthy man by now but that is another story) with 400 men. So Jacob sends a peace offering of A LOT of animals to Esau from his herds and then "in great fear and distress" he divides his people and herds into 2 groups" so that if one group was attacked the other could escape. He had no idea what frame of mind his brother was in. Then he took his family to the other side of the river and then came back...and now he was alone. Now I imagine that "alone time" for Jacob was a thing that NEVER happened. He had 2 wives...yep 2! AND 2 concubines...AND 12 sons and at least one daughter. Plus servants. I rarely get alone time and I have 1 husband and only 2 children...and no servants. So this was a rare thing indeed. It says "So Jacob was left alone..." and then it says "...and a man wrestled with his till daybreak." I wonder how that went down. Did this stranger just walk up to Jacob and start wrestling or did they have words or...or what? How in the world did they start wrestling. The answer is left to our imagination. OK so for a lot of the night Jacob and this guy wrestled. Strange. Well perhaps not so strange really...I've learned something about the male gender :)...they cannot sit still and talk they have to be "doing something" while they talk. So perhaps God's purpose was to get Jacob's attention to get him focused back on what was important...not his brother but God...and maybe he did that by wrestling him. Maybe God was directing Jacob's steps. He saw that Jacob was full of fear and "distressed" over meeting his brother and God didn't want him to worry. I imagine that Jacob was extremely tired after organizing all those people, plus the mental anxiety, plus wrestling all night. He likely met Esau pretty calmly because he had no nervous energy left to have fear and to fret. That's not in the Bible it's just my own thought. Place yourself in Jacob's shoes...

Then it says this "When the man saw that he could not overpower him (Jacob), he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said ,'Let me got for it is daybreak.'" Couple things...this is the second time that Jacob's unnatural strength is mentioned. The first time is when he arrived at his Uncle Laban's after running from his brother. He came to a well and there were all these shepherds and their flocks of sheep just waiting around the well. Jacob (being familiar with all this sheep stuff) asked why they were there (because it was the wrong time of day to water sheep) and then he told them to water the sheep and go back to the pasture. They said they couldn't because all the flocks weren't there yet (and therefore all the shepherds) so they had to wait for them to get there in order to be able to roll back the stone...in other words it took A LOT of guys to move this stone because it was SO HEAVY. Well just then Rachel (Jacob's beautiful cousin arrived with her flock of sheep...well Jacob went and single handed rolled back the stone (Gen. 29:1-10) OK well this time this guy (we at this point aren't clear on who he was) could not get the better of Jacob in this physical match of strength. Jacob was strong...we already know that...but he likely had so much pent up anxiety over meeting his brother as well...plus he was stubborn. Do you know what Jacob said when this stranger asked to be let go of..."I will not let you go unless you bless me." So the guy asked his name and Jacob told him and then the guy changed his name. He said this " Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome." and Jacob said "Please tell me your name" and the guy said, "Why do you ask my name?" Then he blessed him there" I wonder what he said in that blessing? Oh to be a fly on a rock there. Genesis 32:30 "So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, "It is because I saw God face to face , and yet my life was spared." He understood the gravity of the situation. The rest of the chapter says this "The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the tendons attached to the socket of the hip, because the socket of Jacob's hip was touched near the tendon." He likely limped the rest of his life. And it probably reminded him of that night.



I just found it interesting that the 2 times God talked to Jacob...that are recorded...he was ALONE! I find that if I take time to be still and quiet and just BE that is when God grabs my attention and talks to me...He likely talks a lot more but I can't hear him through all the noise and business. God is not obnoxious. He won't get louder and louder so we can hear Him. He waits for us to be quite and still.