Things that I love...

Tonight...incredibly beautiful full moon rising...love it! Which caused me to think of other things that I love...music....there was a song on the radio tonight about airplanes in the skies being shooting stars...and I could really use a wish right now...wish right now...wish right now...deep, huh? Well, in the context of the song, I found it deep, and I love it.

The other day I was sitting on the beach with my niece and her husband and sister...all in their 30's...we had my Ipod on 'shuffle' mode, and Eminem's song Lose Yourself came on...love that song! Being quite a bit past my 30's, my niece looked at me and said, "You like Eminem??" Indeed, some of his music, I love.

And so, I was kind of inspired tonight, by the full moon rising, and by Rihanna and Eminem singing about airplanes being shooting stars...and then I realized that there are an awful lot of things that I love in life...like kids for instance...

I spent some time tonight with one of my favorite teenagers in the world, and we talked about making up new words by combining multiple other words...which reminded me of how very much I love words...if it were possible to swim inside words, I think I might be the Michael Phelps of word swimming, so much do I love the written word...

And then, for some completely irrelevant reason, as I drove along listening to Eminem and looking at the moon, I was reminded of Jacob wrestling with the angel of God at Jabbok...if you ever saw the movie, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, you might recall the scene where Steve Martin's character says to John Candy's character, "If you're going to tell a story, have a point! It makes it ever so much more pleasant for the listener..." Obviously, I worry that my random insertion of the story of Jacob at the River Jabbok will seem out of place, and like it has no point...but the digression can work I think, if you stay with me...

For the last 15 days, I have been wrestling with many things...some of it I've used this blog to process, but obviously, not everything...I don't think it's any surprise that the story of Jacob popped into my head this evening...here it is, as told in the book of Genesis:

That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob's hip so that his hip ws wrenched as he wrestled with the man. Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak." And Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me." The man asked him, "What is your name?" "Jacob," he answered. Then the man said, "Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome."

Well, maybe I overpromised when I said my digression would have a point...because to someone else reading this now, the point might still be hazy...so all I can do is talk about what the story says to me. A few things jumped out at me when I got home tonight and looked this up...first of all, Jacob sends all of his possessions across the river...family and "stuff"...and is left there, alone. I wrote earlier this week about the principle of protecting each other's "aloneness," and am struck by the fact that we need to be alone before we can come face to face with God. At the end of the passage, it says this: So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying "It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared." Somehow, I don't think Jacob would have been visited by God, or by an "angel of God," depending on how you interpret the passage...if he had not been completely alone, and perhaps even more importantly, without his "stuff."

Secondly, and for me, this is the really big thing...the man changed Jacob's name...and that means alot. Our name is fundamental to who we are in the world...and to have his name changed meant that Jacob, the person, and his way of being in this world, was forever changed. And now, I get to wrap this thing up with a bow, and connect all of the dots to the subject of transformation...and what it takes for each of us to be spiritually transformed during our journey through life...

Remember always (I am saying this to myself), transformation is never easy and almost always involves losing something, or someone, or both; transformation requires solitude; transformation will unavoidably involve wrestling with God...and in the end, only God can change our name, and only God has the power to transform us.

Wrestling with God...a pretty amazing thing for us to be called to...and so, as I wrestle with God myself, I also say, "I will not let you go until you bless me."