It was August when my husband and I moved last year to the desert Southwest. We arrived in plenty of time to soak up the last month of 100-degree weather. Since then, we have experienced sandstorms that recall in living color the old movies where cowboys wore bandanas over their faces, long before Covid made masks fashionable. I have taken road trips through territory that made me feel like the only people in the world were the ones in the car with me. Riding into the New Mexico desert with a friend who grew up in the area and knows the landscape of Israel well, I remarked that the view “reminds me of the Holy Land.” She agreed.

In fact, if visiting the Holy Land brought the biblical landscape to life, living in the desert Southwest has made that landscape a daily reality. I’ve gotten pretty serious about sunscreen and water bottles when I go out and about these days. Sunburn and dehydration definitely make their presence known. Reports of bodies found in the desert, whether those of migrants or solo hikers, periodically appear in our local news. Jesus’ counsel that “whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward” (Matthew 10:42), gets very real when I encounter a homeless person by the road on a scorchingly hot day.

It is in this setting that I have been meditating on Genesis 32 during this dry season of Lent. You probably know the story: Jacob is getting ready to cross back into the land that is his true home, his birthright—albeit a birthright he swindled from his brother Esau, who he hasn’t seen in years. Hearing that Esau is coming out to meet him with an army, Jacob is rightly afraid. He divides his camp so that at least half might be protected should Esau attack. Meanwhile, he prepares a rich gift (one might say a bribe) for his estranged brother. He entrusts the gift to his servants, and sends them on ahead, remaining alone in the desert.

The desert is not a safe place, especially when one is alone. Wild animals are an ever-present threat in the night. As is the possibility of a dramatic drop in temperature. And dehydration. To die alone in the desert is very likely to disappear without a trace.

One thing to note, however, is that Jacob has done something remarkable in his preparations—he has not relied solely on worldly strategy. He has first called upon the promise God made to his father and grandfather, and on God’s goodness to Jacob himself:

O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O Lord  who said to me, “Return to your country and to your kindred, that I may do you good,” I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps. (Genesis 32:9-10)

Jacob knows that he is in mortal danger. But he also knows that the promises of God are greater than his own mortality. It is with this acknowledgement of his own vulnerability and God’s goodness that Jacob embraces the night in the wilderness. Having escorted his family into the Land of Promise, he has returned to the desert alone, stripped of all his possessions and relationships, only to encounter a stranger, a man who wrestles with him throughout the night.

The battle itself is exceptional, even epic had it been told in more vivid and poetic detail. It has echoes of the ancient struggle between the cruel and narcissistic King Gilgamesh and the wild man Enkidu, who bested him and befriended him.  However, here the wrestling match also has a more divine side, the stranger who wrestles Jacob is no mere man but God himself, or as the Church Fathers supposed, the pre-incarnate Christ. Jacob is not the master here, and it is only by the stranger’s grace that he is allowed to wrestle all night before the match comes to an abrupt end with Jacob’s injury.

But why then, I have to ask, would God allow Jacob to wrestle him all night, to push him to feats of almost superhuman endurance, only to wound and render him helpless in the end?  What good is it to abandon the wounded Jacob, now even more vulnerable, in the wilderness at daybreak? Yes, God has shown Jacob that he is helpless before the Lord, but is there nothing beyond our helplessness?  Why would God wound Jacob and then leave him to make his own way through the desert, alone and broken?

As it turns out, the pain is not the point. Jacob’s response to his woundedness is the summit of the narrative. He clings to the stranger, declaring, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.” (Genesis 32:26b) The scene is almost comic, as Jacob, in pain and unable to stand on his own, clings to the one who has bested him, surrendering as daylight dawns on the stranger, begging a blessing from one he now knows to be his master.

The pain is not the point; the point is that Jacob does, in fact, cross over into the Promised Land. He is humbled and wounded, and while he has received a blessing, he is still limping. He is a man who has learned to cling to his Lord, and in the next chapter he will be shown to be a man who can humble himself before the brother he has wronged.

This late Lent brings with it the breath of spring; the feeling that it should be Easter already. We find ourselves weary in the desert places, longing for the springs of living water. If we have taken the season seriously and God is wrestling with us, we are weary and perhaps at the point of surrender as the light prepares to break. Whatever desert place we find ourselves in, the pain is not the point.  Surrender. Cling to Jesus for a blessing. It is quite alright to come limping to the Land of Promise and wounded to the altar of God.