Thursday, 4/3/14
Although we have been told to humbly
accept bad fortune, the Bible praises patriarchs who argued with God.
In today’s reading from Genesis, God told Moses that he would so fed up with the Israelites that he was going
down to destroy them. But God relented when Moses argued with him, saying God
should not let his wrath blaze out against his own people. Of course God does
not get angry, and he does not change his mind, but the story is there to tell
us that God wants us to argue with him.
In Chapter 32 of Genesis Jacob had
to repeatedly wade across the Jabbok River, carrying his wives, children, and
belongings across. When he returned to the north bank the last time he was
detained by a spirit who would not let him go. After wrestling through the
night with him, the stranger changed Jacob’s name to Israel, meaning “the one
who struggled with God.”
The moral of that night of
struggling seems to be that when our troubles won’t let us sleep, we should
frankly discuss them with God. When I had Sixth Grade kids do a play about
this, I had them singing a verse to “Glory, glory, Halleluiah!”
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