Jacob is alone at night when a man shows up and wrestles him. They fight all night. Jacob doesn't win, exactly - the man touches his hip and it's dislocated. But Jacob refuses to let go until he's blessed.
I was in spiritual direction when my director asked me to sit with this passage. She said: what are you wrestling with? What won't you let go of?
For me, it was control. I was willing to be injured, willing to spend the whole night in struggle, as long as I could extract a blessing on my own terms. The passage suggests that wrestling with God isn't wrong - it's intimate, fierce, and sometimes you get hurt. But the person who won't let go, who stays in the struggle - that person gets transformed. My hip got dislocated too. My sense of myself as someone who could manage everything got broken. And the blessing came after the breaking.
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