Wrestling

These do feel like days for grappling.

For reaching, touching frayed hems. Hands return with threads, but the garment floats free.

I don’t take hold.

How I fight when the Word dances around me. When it taunts, and teases.

It shimmies before me, smirking. My eyes dart, head weaves while I track its frolicking.

My arms flail, and I embrace but air.

I want my hands around it. I want it tight in my fist. Locked down.

And I am learning, reluctantly, that I will not grasp it. I will not hold it.

For if I can contain it, I will smother it. I will press life out of it.

I will form it to me.

Indeed, if I can grasp it, it simply cannot be as great as it is.

::

The wrestling began in Judges 10 over a week ago. What was He saying? What did it mean? Today, I drew up a chair and sat down.

Stopped thrashing.

Rested.

Listened.

Israel was in great distress. Then the Israelites cried out to the LORD, “We have sinned against you, forsaking our God and serving the Baals.”

The LORD replied, “When the Egyptians, the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Philistines, the Sidonians, the Amalekites and the Maonites oppressed you and you cried to me for help, did I not save you from their hands? But you have forsaken me and served other gods, so I will no longer save you. Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen. Let them save you when you are in trouble!”

But the Israelites said to the LORD, “We have sinned. Do with us whatever you think best, but please rescue us now.” Then they got rid of the foreign gods among them and served the LORD. And he could bear Israel’s misery no longer. (Judges 10:9b-16)

Five statements.

Each one excruciating.

From the mouth of the scorned God of a fickle people fascinated with their own pleasure pour words that reveal His broken heart.

You have forsaken Me.

I’ve heard Him say that to the people before. They walked familiar ground. But what He said next, these words were less common. I’d heard something similar just once.

The words chilled. Bones seized up a little.

I will no longer save you.

Frost seemed to draw patterns around my fingers and my heart. The people confessed. Yet He would no longer save.

Go and cry to the gods you have chosen.

He was done. He would have no more to do with them. You want something besides Me? Then go have it. I chose you. You chose them. Go to them. I’m done.

I didn’t like this God who could frighten me, who could make my heart feel as ice within me. The words pierce. They sat before me all week long, my heart cracking a little wider open with each reading.

The humiliated, broken people mouthed words back. More excruciating words.

We have sinned. Do with us what You think best.

Devastating repentance.

Repentance made not at the feet of the overjoyed Father, welcoming home his lost son with tears. No, repentance made at the turned back of a Father who had given up. Who was, in that same moment, walking away.

But even as He walked away, reeling from the sting of how many gods had taken His place, grieving in advance over those who would replace Him in the next days, He stopped.

And turned.

And looked back on His beloved.

And He could bear Israel’s misery no longer.

::

I struggled to find breath in a pool of questions at once splashing me and again pulling me under.

Was there an end to His mercy, though it be new every morning?

Did God do a knee-jerk?

Was it like a parent pretending to walk away to draw his child away from the toy aisle though He knew He’d never really go?

Or did He have every intention of going? Forever?

Does God change His mind?

Does He turn? Could it be called repenting, what He did?

Can He resist our contrition?

Is there something He cannot do? Cannot bear?

Where is this God in the Gospel? Disguised? Replaced?

::

You have forsaken Me.

I will no longer save you.

Go and cry to the gods you have chosen.

We have sinned. Do with us what You think best.

He could bear Israel’s misery no longer.

::

Questions wove in and around all week. What’s the word for me? What’s the lesson? Where’s the application?

And the word came back, at long last.

Stop.

Sit.

See.

I don’t have to see the lesson. I have to see Him. Bigger than I saw Him before.

Bigger than I can cram into the slots to which I’ve fit him.

He leaves me questioning. It’s something He’s allowed to do.

::