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)

Reproached from Neighbors

Day 3) Psalm 44:3- “You have made us a reproach for our neighbors”

“A reproach” is to address someone with disapproval.  But the origins infer people started to come near but then backed off.  Someone may want to shake your hand, but if you say, “I’ve got he coronavirus” they’ll back off pretty quickly.  They might “treat you as if you had the plague” (a rather old expression dating back to the 1400s). 
But it is sad to be a reproach to your neighbors. Most people want to be liked, or if not liked at least not derided.  This verse also is blaming God for the reproach.  Jesus was made a reproach on the cross.  Perhaps we have been there blaming God for our reproachment.  Maybe you have felt like this is all God’s fault for allowing viruses into this world to begin with and then allowing it into ours.  Certainly, God can lift our reproach and bring us together again.
     Part of isolation is a mild form of alienation from neighbors.  Some are afraid.  Some think we are somehow "cursed" (whether they say so or not).  Psalm 44 ends- and perhaps our thoughts on being a reproach should end, with the plea: "Rise up and help us; redeem us because of your unfailing love."  The love of others waxes and wanes but God's love is unfailing.  To this we appeal when we are reproached. 

Prayer: Lord,  Hear my cry for mercy.  Help me to love my neighbors and for they in turn to love me in my time of weakness and isolation.  

Short History on Being in Isolation

 

Day 2) Leviticus 13:46- “As long as they have the disease they must live outside the camp.”

Isolation in times of plague has been going on for millennia.  The Egyptians did it.  The Sumerians did it.  The phrase “outside the camp” comes from Leviticus and Exodus where a person who was sick had to stay away from the protection of the camp if they were sick.  My point is that we should not feel alone, or that this has never happened before. 
In 1665 a tailor Eyam, England died of the Great Plague carried from fleas packed in cotton that came from London.  Immediately everyone wanted to leave the village.  The village rector, William Mompesson, persuaded the people to stay in the town and not to spread the plague to another city or place.  The people quarantined themselves to keep from spreading the plague.  260 died, but many lived and kept the plague from spreading.  They risked themselves for a larger good and are to be commended for that. 

Prayer: Lord, bless me and keep me.  Make your face shine upon me and be gracious unto me.  Lift up your countenance upon me and give me peace.

Eyam Church and grave.  

Isolation Devotions- 14 days of devotions on Isolation- "Alone with God."

 Day 1) Luke 5:16-  “But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places where he prayed.”

    Isolation is not a normal way to live.  We are designed by God to love not to be isolated.  There have been many studies done about how isolation even in space stations and Antarctica isolated stations that speak of how being alone wears your immunity system and health down. 
     But when you have a disease that may be highly contagious, It is important to be isolated.  Tens of thousands of medical workers have for many months been isolated from their families for fear of giving them the coronavirus. 
   While isolation is not the ideal, if you find yourself isolated it is important to make the most of it.  Jesus actually sought isolation.  He wanted to be alone in prayer with the Father.  So he often withdrew to lonely places where he prayed.   He left to go to the wilderness after his cousin John (the Baptist) was beheaded, but 5,000 followed him.  He later sent them off, and still went up to pray.  Afterwards he walked to his disciples on the water in a storm.  Jesus saw isolation as a time not to just veg out (though he didn’t have Netflix, or videogames), but Jesus saw it as a time to get right with God.  We should use our isolation time like that as well.

Prayer: Lord, let me get right with you, the living God in my time of isolation.