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To see God face to face
The Bible tells us Jacob was alone
the night before his brother Esau came,
bringing with him the four hundred men
that rendered his approach so ominous.
How black the darkness Jacob must have felt,
as he wrestled with what the Bible calls
a man, but what, since Jacob was alone,
perhaps were chiefly his unsettled thoughts.
It is not hard for us to understand
the agony of wrestling alone,
looking back, reviewing our mistakes,
and dreading all the outcomes that might be.
“The hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint.” Genesis 32:25
But still he wrestled on . . . and so can we,
until we find the blessing, feel the change—
a change of heart, a change of name:
no longer “Jacob” but now “Israel.”
Instead of cowering in fear,
when passing through a long and lonely night,
let us, like Jacob, wrestle and prevail
and find a Peniel of love and light—
a brotherhood renewed, the broken healed,
progress accepted, a cure revealed.
The morning’s dawn of Truth and Soul and Life—
in what had seemed a dark and dreary place—
shows to us our God whose name is Love
and helps us all to see Him “face to face.” Genesis 32:30
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