The struggles of Israel (or Jacob)

Chapter 32

Probably out of the frying pan into the fire sums up this chapter – 20 years have passed but Jacob is very worried that Esau has not forgotten or forgiven him.

This is confirmed for Jacob when he sends a message to warn Esau of his coming and Esau sets off to meet him right away, with 400 of his mates.

Jacob, in a state of panic, splits his family and flocks into 2 groups – to limit the damage that Esau could do.

Jacob turns to God in prayer this time and asks God for help. He then tries to placate Esau with gifts of livestock.

The next bit is interesting, or at least to me – Jacob has sent everything and everybody ahead to put off the final reckoning when a stranger comes along and has a wrestling match.

Not sure how one goes about this – hey stranger, let’s wrestle?

Anyway Jacob gets injured but does not give up or let his protagonist go without a blessing. For a blessing Jacob (The grasper) gets a new name, Israel (The struggler)

Jacob carries on his journey – though now limping due to his injured hip.

Blessings back in those days must be a much bigger deal that we seem to think these days when Jacob will risk enmity with his brother and further injury in a wrestling match.

for me a blessing could be getting to work and only having half a dozen weekend e-mails to deal with instead of 30!

In the book of his blog A.J. Jacobs touches on this a bit - he found that many of the little blessings, when recognised, actually made him more thankful that things did not go as badly as they may have done.

I'm also concerned that we sometimes miss the really big blessings because we are too tied up to notice the little blessings.

God, please give us  a really big blessing today - and the eyes to see it and appreciate it. Preferably without leaving us with a limp!