Wrestling

I chose the title to this blog because that’s what I thought I’d write about. But now I’m wondering if I’ve chosen that title before! And I am now wrestling with that thought! Slightly ironic, don’t you think? But then, that’s what happens with wrestling. It tends to keep coming back. At least for me. And it has. Perhaps, more accurately, wrestling is something that happens over a long period of time. That’s certainly true for me. And it’s not an easy thing, wrestling, especially when it involves things you hold dear. And I hold my faith, if I may be so bold as to call it that, very dear. In some ways it defines me. I grew up in a Christian household where my dad, and then years later, my mum, were both ordained priests in the Anglican church. I am steeped in church and faith and following God. I’m not sure I could ever walk away from faith. Which sounds like I’m the kind of Christian we are all told we should aspire to be (at least that’s what I thought I heard when I was growing up). You know, the Christian who never gives up on faith, who always stands firm in their faith, the one who finds God in anything and everything. Hmmm. Well, I’m not sure that describes me very accurately. And, as I say, I’m wrestling. And have been for some time. Over different aspects of what I might call, my faith. If you have ever been in a place where you are wrestling with faith, then you probably already know what I think I’m discovering. It turns out that wrestling with faith is critical for faith to grow. The Bible is replete (that’s a word I never thought I’d use anywhere, let alone in a blog) with stories of wrestling with faith. One of the most well know is that of Jacob wrestling with God. And what I love about that story, is that it is God who initiates the wrestling! At the end of the wrestling, Jacob is different (he can’t walk properly because of his hip) and he has a different understanding of God. He met God in a new and different way, and that changed him, and his understanding of God. And, as if that’s not enough, God changes Jacob’s name to Israel, which means something along the lines of “wrestling with God”. And that was the name for the nation of the people of God! Love it! The people of God wrestle with the exile, and what that means for them as God’s people: what about all the promises that seem to have come to an end? What kind of God is this? And the whole of the New Testament is a wrestling with how to fit this Jesus, the Messiah, into Judaism, when, in truth, it doesn’t. Not even close. A crucified Messiah? That cannot be! It seems I’m in good company. What I know is that wrestling with faith in anything but easy. But what I’m also learning is that rather than make God and faith smaller, it makes God and faith bigger. So, however hard it becomes, I’m going to go on wrestling. And in that at least, I am wonderfully a man of faith. A proper Christian even!