Left Alone to Wrestle with God

 Day 5) Genesis 32:24- “Left alone to wrestle with God”

“After he had sent them [wives and children] across the stream, he sent over all his possessions.  So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak…You name will be Israel because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.”  (Genesis 32:23,24,28)

 

Thoughts: When we are alone, we may mentally and spiritually struggle with God and with others.  It is times of aloneness when it is easier to remove the “white noise” and even the “good focuses” in order to have the greatest focus on God.  In sickness or isolation, we will often consider every scenario and outcome, but only God can change or soften what we face. 
    There is no other god in history that invites us to wrestle with Him.  We may ask “Am I at fault?” “Why is this happening to me?”  “Why would God do/allow this?”  “How does my faith interact with my hurting?”  But God does not want us to think that life is just a series of chaotic and accidental events.  But God has purposes in life and we can learn through each event.  Wrestling with God is one way we learn and not just hide our head in the sand or deny that God isn’t working with us in our heartache.  Wrestling with God is actually a step toward healing and acceptance.  James 1 tells us that it is through wrestling in the trials of life that we become mature.  Isaiah 40 gives us a promise that “He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Isaiah also reminds us that we may not be able to understand what God is doing for “My ways are higher than your ways.” 
    In this passage we see that it is good to wrestle with God.  After wrestling with God, Israel changed his name from Jacob, and also the name of the place was changed from Jabbock to Penuel (which means “the face of God”).  We get closer to God when we wrestle with Him in our heartaches. 

 

Prayer: Lord, as I wrestle with you, I also know that I am dependent on you to give me strength to wrestle!  In my alone time, come near me. 

Loneliness is Not Good

 Day 4) Genesis 2:18- “It is not good for the man to be alone.”  This isn’t good.

     So God created the world, the lights, the seas, the earth, the plants and animals and man- after each one He says, “And God saw that it was good.”  Now God says for the first time “It is not good…for man to be alone.”  We are made to be with other people.  There have been hermits over the years, but it is not the same.    

     God made us to love other people.  Not just in marriage, but in friendship and fellowship.  Being in isolation is a temporary state we undergo out of love for others- that they might not get what we have.  So, yes, you are loving others when you are isolated to keep others safe.
    Isolation has often been used (historically) as a form of punishment in prisons.  Some now are considering this inhumane torture.  Most suicides in prison occur in isolation.  Mentally ill or stressed prisoners are especially effected. It is not good for us to be alone.  We can sympathize when we are in quarantine or isolation.  Many health-workers have self-isolated themselves from their family and friends away from their clinics/hospitals out of concern for them.  This adds to mental fatigue.

    John Donne was a British pastor/cleric who lived in the late 1500s- 1600s when the Great Bubonic Plague was still sweeping Europe, killing half the population.  He had a fear of being isolated, a fear of solitude at the height of the plague.  He said that this fear of loneliness was, “a disease of the mind at the height of the infectious disease of the body.”  He wrote these majestic words, “No man is an island, entire of himself; every man is a piece of a continent, a part of the main.”  Isolation hurts.  We know that.  I am simply “naming the demon.”  There were in the mid-early church hermits who went out to the desert to be alone with God.  Being around other people is also hard.  People can be more messy (or more neat) than we want.  People can rub us the wrong way with being too know-it-all or too simple.  People can be overly mean or doormats to others.  But the commandment to “love your neighbor” hinges on the idea “it is not good for the man to be alone.”  Love calls us to overcome pride, selfishness, and differences to get outside of ourselves for the other’s good- our own good- and the good of all- and the glory of God. 

Prayer: Lord, being alone hurts.

 

(John Delgado who works for a food bank isolated himself from his family
as mother, wife, and child were susceptible to Covid19 issues.  Miami Herald 4/3/20)