"Who are you, Jacob?" With his strength spent, his hip dislocated, and his last wit frayed, the broken man declared, "I am Jacob, the heel-graber." ... He was all at once fragile. Maybe he could finally know peace. Maybe now he could yield. Though his brother could trade it and his father could speak it, only God could bless him. Only God could actually do what he had promised. The angel of the Lord spoke a blessing over Jacob, saying "From now on, your name shall no longer be Jacob (Deceiver) but Israel (God fights) because you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed."
The preceding passage comes from an Advent devotional entitled Behold the Lamb of God by Russ Ramsey. It endeavors to tell the WHOLE story of Christ's coming, which actually begins in Genesis. His retelling of the story of Jacob wrestling with God struck me powerfully today.
This always seemed one of the more stranger stories in the Bible to me. I was always taught that the main point of the story was Jacob's persistence. In this vein, the moral is something like: "blessings come to those who do not give up." The problem with this interpretation is that it divorces the encounter from the big story of the Bible.
It wasn't about Jacob not giving up while wrestling with God, but about God not giving up on Jacob. God was so dead-set on using him, that he forced him to face a hard truth about himself: that he was a "heel-grabber," a deceiver, and completely unworthy of being used by God for any reason whatsoever.
As we prepare to receive the Good News of Christ's birth this year, let us also hear God's question to Jacob being asked of us. "Who are you?" God already knows. And until you face up to all that you are apart from Christ, you'll never be able to receive who you could be through his grace.
The preceding passage comes from an Advent devotional entitled Behold the Lamb of God by Russ Ramsey. It endeavors to tell the WHOLE story of Christ's coming, which actually begins in Genesis. His retelling of the story of Jacob wrestling with God struck me powerfully today.
This always seemed one of the more stranger stories in the Bible to me. I was always taught that the main point of the story was Jacob's persistence. In this vein, the moral is something like: "blessings come to those who do not give up." The problem with this interpretation is that it divorces the encounter from the big story of the Bible.
It wasn't about Jacob not giving up while wrestling with God, but about God not giving up on Jacob. God was so dead-set on using him, that he forced him to face a hard truth about himself: that he was a "heel-grabber," a deceiver, and completely unworthy of being used by God for any reason whatsoever.
As we prepare to receive the Good News of Christ's birth this year, let us also hear God's question to Jacob being asked of us. "Who are you?" God already knows. And until you face up to all that you are apart from Christ, you'll never be able to receive who you could be through his grace.
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