The Cost of Blessing

What would you be willing to endure in order to obtain a blessing? 

I've been asking myself this question a lot lately. In two books I've recently read, this idea came up of blessing following a great struggle and I'm wondering how many times I turned away the means to a blessing because it came in the guise of a supposed curse... 

I have been led to the story of Jacob, bearer of a name that means "fraud" or "deceiver." He who had connived his way into the fatherly blessing that would've gone to his older brother finds himself at a stream decades after fleeing from home for fear of his brother's revenge. Family in tow, he has been called by God to come back to meet his brother after all these years (Gen. 32:22-32). He is not sleeping this night - thoughts of uncertainty plague his mind, and he is alone. But God comes to him in this dark, this place of lonely contemplation. God comes because He wants to bless. But He doesn't come to Jacob in a way he would've recognized God. God disguises His presence in the form of a hidden figure, an angel, who wrestles Jacob to the ground. There, they struggle until the break of day. 

Let me count the numerous moments when I too have been found alone in the dark. Let me enumerate the times I almost missed God because He did not come to me as I expected. Came in hidden form where His presence was less detectable and, only later, did I realize it was Him. 

As dawn arrives on the horizon, the One with whom Jacob struggles sees he yet fights on. Somehow, even after wrestling all night, he still has enough strength left in him to keep straining. He has not attempted escape from his struggle - something has kept him here. And he is still trying to win this battle. So God determines to make him weak. To give him a reminder of this battle for the rest of his life. God does two things - first, he gives Jacob a limp. A physical wound that will never allow him to forget this night - the night he strove with God. Second, He gives Jacob a new name - one that reflects his destiny and not his past. God calls him "Israel," meaning "strives with God." And God tells him that he has wrestled with God and has prevailed. He whose existence had always identified him as the deceptive one now was given a new identity - overcomer. Upon the realization that his struggle was Divinely-ordained, Jacob holds on and pleads for something more: a blessing. He tells the heavenly messenger that he will not leave until he is blessed. 

Perhaps, in my attempts to escape from the very things meant for my good, I have desired a way out when the only way was the way through? Perhaps I have passed up opportunities to be blessed but I only asked to be turned loose because it hurt too much? Maybe, the truth is, my prayer should've been that I would not leave the scene of the struggle until I reached the moment I knew the pain was worth it? Would not go until I obtained the blessing of the battle? 

With a hip out of joint and the sun peeping at daybreak, God grants Jacob his desire. There, at brook-side, He blesses him. Jacob asks for confirmation that this was, indeed, God's doing. He asks the angel his name. But God tells the angel not to reveal his identity to Jacob. He just wants Jacob to take what has happened by faith, to accept his wound and his blessing as enough. And so the angel leaves, and Jacob is again left alone. 

Sometimes, I, too, have sought confirmation. Asked God to be doubly clear that this struggle has a good end in sight. But all He's left me with is a wound to remind me that blessing comes with a cost. He hasn't always answered my questions. He just asked me to exercise my faith. 

Jacob wants to remember. So he names the place Peniel, which means "the face of God." It was also the place of struggle and the place of pain but, more importantly, it was the place where God showed up. And that's what he wants to hold onto. Upon the angel's departure, Jacob knows deep down who was here. He sees enough to confirm in his heart that God has visited him. That God has asked him to struggle in the dark for his blessing. He who once deceived his way into the blessing of his earthly father is asked to wrestle and then become weak before he can receive the blessing of his heavenly Father. And only then does God see him fit to go meet his older brother. To come before his kin not in strength but in weakness. 

Often, blessing doesn't appear as we expect. Sometimes it comes in guise of hidden things, of opposites. Of stuff we'd rule out as curse or enemy when, in reality, it is merely the means to giving us what we really need. What we want most. 

Author Barbara Brown Taylor writes, "Who would stick around to wrestle a dark angel all night long if there were any chance of escape? The only answer I can think of is this: someone in deep need of blessing; someone willing to limp forever for the blessing that follows the wound." 

So what would you be willing to endure in order to obtain a blessing? 

We as human beings are pretty big on trying to escape difficulty. Who wants to struggle if you can have the good things an easier way? But the truth is, in God's kingdom, there really isn't a way to have the good things an easier way. The struggle is inescapable, unavoidable. Anything worth obtaining requires effort...even the blessing we most need and desire. This is not to say that we are to work for the favor God offers; that has already been granted to us through the saving work of God's Son, Jesus. But blessing doesn't come without a price, without a cost, without a struggle. 

After all, can you really see the face of God if you can't learn to notice Him in the dark? 

I stop to gaze at a clump of wildflowers while hiking with a friend. How fitting it turns out to be a bunch of "Jacob's Ladder," purple-color springing out of the rocky soil on the side of the trail. As a bee lands on one tiny bloom, I'm reminded...

Maybe the very things you're wrestling against may be the things God wants to use to bless you. 

Maybe the greatest works God wants to perform in your life are the ones done against your pleasure and against your will.

Maybe the things you'd like most to wipe from your memory are, in reality, the very agents God used to do the most good in your life and, were you to eliminate all the bad things from your story, you'd actually wipe out the good that came with them. 

Maybe victory actually looks like learning to walk with a limp, learning to accept a thorn in your side, for the blessing that arrives in that very weakness.

Maybe meeting the face of God looks like being alone in the dark, facing uncertainty, and wrestling with the urge to run away. 

Maybe life is about learning to hold onto Him and hold out for a blessing, even if it comes are the cost of your own discomfort and convenience.