Wrestling

When I was young (sadly I’m old enough to write that) there was wrestling on the TV on a Saturday afternoon. I never watched it because we didn’t have a TV in our house, but I knew the names Bid Daddy and Giant Haystacks! I never did wrestling either. Oh…unless the fights with my brother count! Actually, my brother and I are still arguing about a “wrestling match” we had once in the back room when we were kids. He still says I tripped him. The truth is, he tripped himself. The outcome was that he ended up in hospital with a dislocated elbow! I digress. I might not have watched or engaged in wrestling like you could see on the TV, but I’ve done a lot of wrestling over the years. And I probably do more now than I’ve ever done. I have all sorts of questions about life and family and growing older and faith. All sorts of things. I certainly wrestle more with faith now. I’m actually wondering how I’ve got this far in my journey of faith, in my time in ministry, without noticing some of the things that now trouble me. How have I missed them? I’m wrestling with the Bible and what’s in it, how it does, or doesn’t present who God is. I’m wresting with church, that complex gathering of people a bit like me, what it’s about and how we should or shouldn’t (emotive words I know) go about things. I wrestle with things I once believed but now I don’t, or don’t want to believe. Oddly, in all this, I’d say I’m more Christian now than I’ve ever been. Which I think is good! If tough. Very tough sometimes. I’m encouraged when I read the story of Jacob in Genesis 23. He wrestled with a man all night the Bible tells us, only for him to find out that he had apparently wrestled with God! As far as I can tell we have no idea what it meant for Jacob to be wrestling with God other than that he walked with a limp from them on. Oh…and that he was given a new name: Israel. And guess what the name Israel means? Yep: one who struggles with God! Beautiful. And Israel, the nation, has done that ever since: struggled with, or wrestled, with God. Seems like I’m in good company then. I’m really struggling to know what to say about what the prophet Nahum wrote and I’m supposed to be speaking on it in a week’s time! Perhaps one thing his words speak to us is that, whatever is going on around us, whatever our current circumstances, “the LORD is good, a refuge in times of trouble.” (Nahum 1:7) We sing a song sometimes that starts with these words: “In my wrestling, in my doubts, in my failures you won’t walk out!” I think that capture a deep truth: wresting with faith and God is ok. God is not put off by it. He is not threatened by it. He even named his people by it! So…I’m going to go on wrestling. And, if God can meet Jesus in his wrestling in the garden of Gethsemane, (if there’s any other way…), then maybe he can meet me, in mine.