Wrestling with God

I found this on Facebook today. It was posted by one of my favorite priests, Fr. Jun Mercado, OMI who was our university president when I was in college. Read on.

When do I wrestle with God?

The Scriptures call us into a personal struggle like Jacob’s, where God both wounds him and yet blesses him. It almost sums up the whole Bible. He wrestled with the angel of Yahweh and “won” (Genesis 32:24-31)! It became the very name “Israel.” In such a personal involvement, in our own wrestling match with the mystery of God, we come to the fullness of faith. The wonderful thing about this wrestling match is that God always allows us to win in the end, although in the middle it might feel like we are losing.

Faith is not a competing ideology with other religions or “gods.” Biblical faith is more a process than a conclusion, more a way of relating than a way of explaining, more a wrestling match than a classroom lesson—a growing dialogue of constant give and take, and not just give and not just take.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, OFM. The Great Themes of Scripture (Resource no longer in print, superseded by the New Great Themes of Scripture)