Two Wednesdays ago, my squad left for month 1 debrief. We will have three debriefs during our trip, and their purpose is to give us a week to rest, process, grow, and be refilled after weeks of pouring out. I went into the week knowing it would be super fun, but I didn’t realize how refreshing it would be, and how much God would teach me. I could write a very long blog, but I’ll try to summarize.
One passage in the Bible I’ve never really been able to grasp is Genesis 32:22-32. It’s a fairly well known story about Jacob wrestling with God, who was in the form of a man. Jacob and God struggle all throughout the night, until God wrenched Jacob’s hip out of its socket. However, Jacob would not give in and demanded a blessing. God said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with humans and have overcome.” Then, He blessed Jacob (or Israel). After the sun rose, Jacob walked away with a limp, because of his injured hip.
Like I said earlier, this story has always left me confused. Over debrief, I slowly started to understand and grasp the importance and hope that lies in these 10 verses. Wrestling with God is something we all do. When things don’t make sense, when we see the brokenness surrounding ourselves, or when we can’t find any logical explanation for what is happening around us, we wrestle with God and ask, “Why??” “How is this the right plan?” “Isn’t there a better way?” As I serve in a third world country, it’s so easy to ask these questions. I see the poverty, the tragedy, the uneducated children, the effects of the Khmer Rouge, and I wrestle.
There is brokenness everywhere on this earth, but the brokenness here is not masked nearly as much as the Western world. Living in a place where the hurt and pain and struggle is exposed has brought out the brokenness in my own heart. God convicted me this past summer that I wasn’t relying on Him like I should. As my weaknesses and insufficiency have been revealed more and more to me, the more and more dependent I’ve become on the Lord. He fills the holes. He bridges the gaps. He binds my wounds. And just like He did for Jacob, God blesses me by revealing more of Himself to me.
I’m currently reading, “Daring to Hope: Finding God’s Goodness in the Broken and Beautiful,” by Katie Davis Majors (the author of Kisses from Katie). She wrote a beautiful paragraph that speaks to my heart every day:
“In the wrestling, He [God] makes us who we are meant to be in Him. It isn’t easy and it isn’t pain free, but it can be glorious. In the wrestling, we get to be right up next to our strong Father and tangibly know the truth that He does not let go. He will not let go. We walk wounded, like Jacob, but we have seen the face of God in our pain, and we have encountered a new kind of intimacy with the One who holds our hearts in His. We might walk away scarred, but we are stronger and we are renamed: His.”
Amidst the brokenness, the dirtiness, and the wrestling, God is faithful. I don’t think I’ll ever fully have answers to my questions. I’ll never be all knowing. But I do know that God makes beauty from ashes. He provides streams in the deserts. He makes life sprout from stumps. My job is trust Him, and His job is everything else.
