Do you ever have sleepless nights? These may be times when your body aches to sleep and yet your mind races. Are those nights of anxiety, nights of planning for the next day, or possibly are they times of wrestling with God?
I have wrestled with God. Even when I heard clearly the invitation of God for my life-mission and work, I wrestled. I could think of all the exceptionally valid reasons to do something else. The longer I resisted, the longer I wrestled with God the more my heart burned with God-desire. Finding our life-work, our greatest mission and calling of our lives is one of the most challenging and awesome events of life. The path may be overcast with fog, hidden potholes and thorns reaching out to snag our us and hold us back. But when we persist, we discover a gift of deep joy and an unfolding God-life uniquely created just for you!
But how is one to find that way? How does one know if a decision or a course of action is God’s desired life or self-will masquerading as maybe God’s desire? There are no quick fixes to these questions. There is no outline of steps, to give you a map to follow. I wish there was – or do I? In the absence of a God dictated roadmap for personal and professional life, we folks often find ourselves wrestling with God to seek direction, meaning and purpose. It is through the wrestling with God, that search for a God-desired life, that God forms and shapes our interior being.
The Scripture
I enjoy reading the humanness of Jacob and his deep desire to know God. (Genesis 32:22-32) He was willing to bare it all before God. As he wrestled his weakness, strengthen, determination, hope, and love all engaged the angel. That night when the angel came to Jacob, Jacob showed up. He put the work in and his life mission, his blessing, and clarity of identity was birthed. No longer was Jacob called by his given birth name, but now he was called by a new name, Israel. A new name that reflected his life mission as one not just for himself, but always for the wellbeing and love other others. His new name reflected his mission in community. Jacob lived from a heart fashioned from his wrestling with God. His life was forever changed.
Are you seeking? Do you yearn for clarity of meaning, purpose, or direction? Maybe it is not about your full life mission, but a situation that you struggle with, or seek meaning and direction. Have you ever wondered if there is more to life than what you are currently experiencing? What questions are you wrestling with at this time?
God is seeking you. God yearns to shape your life into the perfect God-image that was given at your physical birthing. This influences all engagement with others, roles you live, and interior attitudes and mannerisms. But God doesn’t push over us, manipulate or strong arm us into faith and obedience. As much as God seeks us and yearns for us to love God as God loves us, God waits until that opportune time when we are ready to show up and willing to put in the faith-forming work of prayer and spiritual formation.
This life-long journey of wrestling and submitting to God is our gift of formation. God’s infinite presence, wisdom, and guidance will take us further than we ever imagined as we show up with each step of life. The key is to begin and then to begin again, since as St. Benedict states we are always beginners in the spiritual life. Here is a little fun activity to spark your heart in the discerning hidden wholeness of prayer.
Do you remember the Highlights magazine? It is a children’s magazine that has riddles, stories and activities? One of the activities is a hidden picture. That is a picture that has small pictures hidden within the bigger picture. Here is a link to a hidden picture for you today. As you seek for hidden objects consider the skills you need to find the pictures. After finding the hidden objects, make a list of tools you used to discover the hidden pictures. Now prayerfully consider which of these skills are most needed in searching for God’s presence hidden in your life? How is God inviting you to show up and wrestle with God? What is showing up before God? It is listening, putting in time, effort, heart and love of self which opens your heart for God forming love within your life?
Invitation for Contemplation and Journaling
Today you will ponder the insightful and powerful presence of God as you consider wrestling with God and the skills that gift you in seeking the hidden presence of God as you trek through the Lenten wilderness and journey toward resurrection possibility. The focus of today’s lettering writing is upon insights and wisdom gleaned from your discovery with the hidden picture and the Scripture of Jacob wrestling with God.
Contemplative Experience
Please plan a two-step approach for each daily devotional. First, read the devotional and mentally review the reflection questions. This could be your morning devotional time. That way you can contemplate on the material throughout your day. The questions are simply to prime the heart’s creative imagination in preparation for writing your Love Letter to God and your imagined response from God. Your Love Letter portfolio is your gift of this process. It is to be a written record of how you and God companion one another through this season. It is the inward formational journey of these six weeks during which you may find yourself becoming God’s Love Letter to others through your daily life.
At the end of the day, center yourself before God in silence and solitude for writing your Love Letters. To begin, enter your sacred space and invite God into your awareness. This invitation may begin with the repetition of your favorite name for God silently in your mind. This may look like focusing your mind and heart upon the name Jesus: Jesus… Jesus… Jesus…Take an intentional breath slowly in through your nose as the Divine presence of the risen Christ breathes into you. Let that breath of Jesus float slowly down your throat, into your lungs and imagine it going into each cell of your body. After a moment – exhale slowly and let the air escape through your slightly parted lips. With this exhale let the stale air carry away resistances and busyness of your day, so that you may come fully into God’s presence. Repeat this breathing invitation to God several times before moving to the next step of contemplation and journaling.
Morning: In preparation for writing your Love Letters, mentally consider the following queries. There is no need to write responses unless that is helpful for you to focus in writing your Love Letter to God.
- Use imaginative pray throughout your day with the text from Genesis and wisdom gleaned from seeking the hidden pictures which open insights into your seeking for God.
- Imagine what it felt like for Jacob to wrestle with the angel of the Lord through the night. Did he get tired? What spurred on his determination? What did it feel like when he received blessing and a new name?
- Consider a time when you have wrestled with God. What was it like for you, or if you are wrestling with God right now – what is it like for you?
- What hidden wisdom did you discover from the Hidden Picture?
- How is God seeking you, as you seek God through this Lenten sojourn?
- What questions arise for you around your word from scripture as God invites you into this season of Lent?
Writing your Love Letter to God
Evening: Continue your time of prayer in the evening after a contemplative day with pen in hand and imagination open before God. Today’s Love Letter to God focuses on your word that you discerned from scripture. Consider:
- How will you address God? Maybe you will use “Dear God”, possibly something more extravagant such of “To my Heart’s Love.” Be as creative and free in expression as your soul desires as you write to God.
- What do you imagine that you could whisper to God about the Scripture and your discerned word? Maybe your Love Letter to God will focus upon how you are starting this Lenten trek with God’s resounding Word. Are there fears, joys, concerns that you would like to express to God?
- How will you close your letter. Might you close in gratitude, humility, or another posture of love?
Next write the imaged response letter from God to you. This may take a leap of faith. Possibly a conversation with a spiritual director may be helpful to open imagination for how God whispers to your heart. Consider your image of God. Is God a judge, a Shepherd, inclusive Love, or perhaps the Vine to your branches? How does your image of God influence your imagined response letter from God.
What do you imagine God longs to whisper to your heart in response to your Love Letter to God?
- How does God feel about what you have written?
- How does God embrace and care for your concerns, or celebrate your joys?
- Sit silently and listen. Imagine how God desires to write a letter back to you. How does God address you in the greeting of the letter? What feelings are expressed within the letter from God to you? Try to look at yourself through God’s eyes and heart. Remember in your imagination that God looks upon the inward nature of those whom God loves. Your image of God will shape how you imagine God would respond to your Love Letter.
- How does God close this Love Letter to you?
With these two letters, the one you write to God and God’s imagined response to you, you begin your portfolio of becoming a living Love Letter to God. You may desire to create a cover page for your love letters so that you can store them in a binder or possibly create a folder upon the computer just for your Lenten love letters. Upon completion of your letters, pause for a moment of silent thanksgiving for God’s resounding Word and love in life.
After giving thanks for uncovering God’s presence through your word discovery and writing your Love Letters to God and to you from God, re-read your own words. Be gentle with yourself. You are not evaluating what is written. Simply come to the text with the wonder if God has any other wisdom or words to share with you through this archeological reading of your words. If you discover any further insight from God, you are free to add to your portfolio with additional resounding Words of wisdom.
When you have completed praying, place your Love Letter portfolio on your altar table or in the absence of a table, bring it to your heart in an embrace. Offer a prayer of gratitude for all the gifts of God’s insights. You may use this prayer or one of your own.
Dear Jesus, I join you again this day on our trek through the desert. Forgive my resistant spirit for the times when I have shied away from engaging you. Truly Lord, I seek you. I yearn to experience your hidden wholeness of love, not just for myself, but always for the wellbeing of others. Let your justice love and live through me. Assist me through my time of wrestling with you, that I may be open to receive the blessing that you are preparing me to live as I journey toward Easter’s dawning. Grant me a new name. Grant me the name you long for me to live among community as I love your people. I offer myself to you again this day. This offering is a deepening of myself with an openness to your love so that you may transform my inner mannerisms and self-conceptions. I love you and am so thankful to intentionally walk this Lenten journey with you. Thank you, Jesus for your steadfast love and endurance which carries me through the desert. Amen.
