Rants and Encouragements

YOU CAN DO IT SISTER! You’re doing it for all of us who are always “too busy” (too LAZY!) to get back to the blank page. I’m TOTALLY rooting for you. I’m anxious to read about RAIN too. Write on dreamer of dreams. Write on chaser of heart’s desires. Write on storyteller. Write on heart on fire. Write on author. Go! Go! Go!

*SQUEEZE*

‘TINA,

How’s the book coming along? Peek? Please? Ha! Stay motivated and keep going; you’re writing for the both of us. (=- So inspiring. I trust all else is well; hopefully you can balance it all. Keep in touch between work and writing. Love ya bunches sister. Bunches. *squeeze* GBYA! (=-

Hey Tina. I was reading through the book that I was talking to you about when you said you got your idea for this novel. And I thought, hey why not share a little bit… dunno if it’ll help much with your novel, but at the very least, it is a nice lesson to learn about dependency on God.

This is from the book Daring to Draw Near by John White. He is discussing Genesis 32:22-32…

Jacob wrestled with God because he had no choice. He was defending himself, not attacking. Yet the end of the narrative states that he had won a victory. “Your name shall no more be called Jacob,” he was told, “but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed”.

The name Israel means “God strove.” So far so good. We can rest assured that if God strove then God was indeed the initiator of the struggle.

In what sense then did Jacob prevail? Read the narrative again. Picture the wrestling as God seeking to help Jacob understand something. Picture him as urging upon Jacob truths that Jacob was unwilling to see. Picture him, as they struggle, trying to convince Jacob that he means him no harm, that his intentions are not malicious but merciful. (Often I have had to seize delirious patients as they rush terrified into the Canadian snow. I am the aggressor, yet my purpose is merciful.) But Jacob is too afaid. All his life he has learned one lesson: It is safe to trust no one. Jacob must fight his own battles. So he wrestles on, terrified by unyielding. Then, suddenly – incredible pain and a useless leg.

Have you ever tried wrestling with lumbago or a slipped disc? If you should ever find yourself in Jacob’s situation, let me tell you what you will do. You will cling. You will hang on to your opponent with desperation. Either you cling or you fall. And through the fog of pain and terror, the words began to penetrate Jacob’s brain, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.”

Let him go? How can he? He isn’t even sure whether he can walk. Let him go? How dare he? At some point the awful knowledge has gripped him that the one on whose breast he leans sweating and grasping is the God of his fathers, who could slay him with a glance. And for once, since he has no choice, no other hope, Jacob’s tenacity is turned in to the right direction.

“I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”

They are words god has waited for forty years to hear. He would have preferred that Jacob recognize his helplessness and cast himself on the mercy of his God long before. He did not wish to reduce him to such an extremity, but Jacob left him little choice. And God’s response is swift in coming. Jacob was conquered by his helpless dependency.

God bless.